Voicemail

TLDR

Don’t leave me a voicemail.

Okay, but why?

Someone recently left me a voicemail but I’d never actually set up the service on my phone. So I dutifully called 101 and the helpful robot insisted I had to set a PIN before I could do anything else. Not just any PIN mind you, it had to be at least 6 digits, and complex (no repeating patterns or consecutive digits). 6 digits eh? Because someone is going to look at my phone and say - you know what? I’m prepared to brute force 10000 attempts to get into this guy’s voicemail, but I draw the line at 1000000. Sure, sounds plausible (rolls eyes).

Rant: on

What is the purpose of this? Under what scenario is someone going to bust into my voicemail? And what information could they possibly obtain?

Well, assuming we’ve got a bad actor, they would presumably need to have physical access to my unlocked phone. At that point, they could read my email or messages, exfiltrate whatever files they wanted from my synced OneDrive, install some spyware app … or listen to my f***ing voicemail?

Ah yeah, this is such-and-such, call me back

Well, I’ve been pwned.

Look, I can envisage a scenario where you might want to protect your voicemail. But I can’t imagine any scenario like that which involves me. Maybe if you’re a spy or something?

What I’m saying is that this sort of thing should be optional, not mandatory. Because the thing I’m sure of is that if I have a complex 6 digit PIN that I use every few months or less frequently, I’m not going to remember it. And writing it down eliminates the purpose.

So my voicemail remains unconfigured and thus it shall remain; any messages left for me can float forever in the digital void. Sorry not sorry.

Epilogue

After I huffily hung up on the voicemail set-up robot, my provider helpfully sent me a SMS reminding me that I hadn’t completed my voicemail set-up.

Chef’s kiss.