Blogging IT

“Phreaking” is the telephone system’s version of computer hacking, and in today’s world of IP telephony, there is little difference.

 

Many VoIP and traditional phone systems include the ability to make outbound phone calls from your voicemail, so you can ‘toll-hop’ (i.e. avoid long distance charges on your own phone bill). It’s also a convenient way to call business contacts so they see your business number as your caller-id instead of your home or cell phone.

 

Using weak passwords on your voicemail is all too common, and I constantly urge my clients to choose passwords that are NOT common (1234, 0000, 1111, etc.).

 

Even if you have a ‘unique’ password, there’s still only 10000 options with a 4-digit code, and given that users rarely, if ever, change their voicemail password, the chances of someone gaining access to your voicemail are higher than nil.

 

Here’s some quick rules-of-thumb:

  

• Do not use consecutive digits (e.g. 1234)
• Do not use repeating digits (e.g. 1111)
• Use a password LONGER than 4 digits – each extra digit increases the number of possibilities 10x (5 digits = 100,000 options)
• Don’t tell anyone your password.
• Change it (have you ever changed it?).
• If your phone system supports it, turn off the ability to make outbound calls from your voicemail, and force users who have the function to use longer passwords.
• If you manage phone systems for other businesses, take the time to educate your clients about these ‘rules’ and turn off the toll-hop features unless they want it enabled (and then tell them about these rules again).

 

As we’ve seen in the UK news recently, voicemail hacking is real, and it can happen here too.

 

I have a client (whose Norstar phone system we do not manage) who was a recent victim of a ‘phreaker’, and the phone company called them up one day and said they owed something over $50,000 for calls to Tunisia.

 

They turned off the toll-hop feature and changed their passwords.

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The 'Social Connector' built-in to Outlook 2010, and as a downloadable plug-in for Outlook 2007, is a useful thing. I'll admit I scoffed at it as being some fluffy thing I didn't really need in my Outlook but after setting it up this week and seeing what it does, I am happy to have done so, and I recommend it.

 

Essentially, when you set this up and provide permissions to your social networks (I have set up Facebook, LinkedIn and Windows Live), Outlook will pull information into a pane based on sender email addresses, and present you with the sender's picture as well as an aggregation of past emails in your Outlook, plus status updates and postings from their social network accounts, assuming you're connected with them on the applicable social network.

 

If you're not connected with them through a social network, but they do have a social network account, their public information will be displayed, and a link is there for you to click to send them an invitation to connect.

 

Very handy and useful. I like those kinds of tools.

 

Here's some links to text instructions for installing:

 

Outlook 2010

 

Outlook 2003/2007

 

And here's a couple of videos:

 

 

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A 2009 study shows why businesses should buy better laptops and replace them after 3 years.

 

http://i.dell.com/sites/content/business/smb/sb360/en/Documents/wp-nb-failures-costs.pdf

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April 2011 marked the beginning of our 4th year serving the National Capital Region, and we are excited to also be launching our new web site using 'Web 2.0' content management technologies.

 

You can look forward to more frequent communication coming from us in 2011 and beyond. This space will be used to post commentary on technologies and how they impact business and people.

 

To our clients, thank you for working with us, and to our prospective clients, welcome. We are here to help you succeed!

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