How Private is Your Voice Mail?
Accessing others’ voice mail accounts is easy — and legal, up to a point.
AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile do not require cellphone customers to use a password on their voice mail boxes, and plenty of people never bother to set one up. But if you don’t, people using a service colloquially known as caller ID spoofing could disguise their phone as yours and get access to your messages. This is possible because voice mail systems often grant access to callers who appear to be phoning from their own number.
See full New York Times article on voice mail privacy concerns.
I never leave a voice mail message that I wouldn’t want released to the public. Anyone happening upon my cell’s voice mail would find nothing but the evidence of me and my friends playing phone tag.
I’m glad my mobile phone doesn’t require a password.
Voice mail is becoming obsolete
If you want privacy, use a password. You wouldn’t leave your car unlocked in a parking lot, so it doesn’t make sense to leave your voicemail ‘unlocked’ either.
I find it really interesting that people think their phone and email conversations are private. I default to one assumption: nothing is private. If I want to keep a secret, I just don’t tell anyone.