With this whole News International Rupert Murdoch Phone Hacking Scandal (NIRMPHS) taking over our lives, there seems to be a large misunderstanding in terms of what exactly ‘phone hacking’ is. I will begin by saying that they do not ‘intercept’ calls and listen to live conversations. No, Sir. It’s a lot easier than that.

As with the story they did about Prince William and his injured knee, the information was actually obtained from his voicemail. More often than not, that is what they mean by ‘phone hacking’ – listening to someone’s voicemail. Now how do they do that, you ask? Well, it’s very easy. If you were a bad person you could do it right now to nearly any phone in South Africa. Follow the link to find out how…

For example, with Vodacom, you would dial the person’s number, with the numbers “131” between the “082” part and the rest of the number. That will take you straight to the voicemail message. For other networks (and any network overseas), the reporters at the News Of The World, would call their target with one phone, and when they answered, the reporter would call the number again from another phone – sending them straight to voicemail.

While the voicemail is playing the “Hi, I’m not available right now” message, they would press “1,” which stops the voice message and asks for a password. Most networks have default passwords to get into your voicemail. At this point they would type either “1111” or “0000” or “9999” and they would be into the voicemail – listening to messages as thought they were the actual user.

Another reason why I don’t dig phone calls and don’t have a voicemail system. More on my voicemail setup here.