16 News Now Investigates: Voicemail hacking scam

(WNDU) - An ongoing voicemail hacking scam is targeting Michiana businesses and customers alike.

Scammers are hacking voicemail systems for local companies to intercept calls from people requesting their services.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) Serving Northern Indiana says the scammers can sometimes gain access to a business’s voicemail quite easily by trying default passwords like “1-2-3-4″ and “0-0-0-0.”

“They’re dialing the number, getting into the voicemail, and then punching in the default passcode because a lot of employees of any business — once they get their voicemail set up and they leave their voicemail message and they record that — they don’t go back and change the default passcode, they just continue to use it,” said Jan Diaz, vice president of BBB Serving Northern Indiana.

“As a business’s voicemail messages are being hacked, let’s say it’s a plumbing company, and their voicemail gets hacked. Well customers are leaving messages, ‘Please call me back, I have a pipe burst, I have an issue.’ And so, they are intercepting these calls and actually calling the customers pretending to be the plumbers or the service company,” she added.

Businesses can help their customers avoid being scammed by making sure they are not using the default passwords for their voicemail.

And you at home can protect yourself from this scam as well. If you get a return call from a business and they ask for a payment upfront before even making an appointment, that’s a red flag. Hang up and call the company back directly to make sure you aren’t falling victim to a scam.

You can learn more about this ongoing scam by watching the video attached below:

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