Hacked ! / Harold's Planet

Update: Tuesday, 4/18/2007 I've updated the greeting that was 'hacked' onto my cellphone's voicemail--it's below in green. (and I still thinks it's funny)


Have you ever heard of "voicemail hacking?" That's when someone gains access to your phone's voicemail and can listen to your messages or change your personal message that people hear when they call you. I just found out this past weekend that someone has done that on my phone's voicemail, adding a message that anyone calling will hear instead of the "default" message that had been there. I have a prepaid cell phone which I rarely use anyway ('cause I really have no one to call) and I receive very few calls. But this past Saturday a friend stopped by to visit while another friend was also visiting. Now that is itself very unusual for me since I have just a couple of friends and see one of them about once a month and the other even less. But it just happened they both showed up this week at the same time!

To get back to the voicemail hacker--my second friend Tim came by and he asked "why do you have that weird message on your voicemail?" And I didn't know what he was talking about because when I set up the voicemail, I just chose the "default" recorded message and did not put on a personal message. Since I also never use that feature anyway. Later I want to my friend's house and we called my phone so I could hear the message. It goes something like this: (this is not exact as I don't remember the exact words, but it's close):
"This is the FCC. The greeting of the person you're calling has been censored because it was inappropriate and vulgar. He's obviously a *bleep* *bleep* and his mother is *bleep* *bleep*ho-bag."

There's a little more to it than that--I'll have to try to listen again to get the whole thing right--but that's the general tone of it. The *bleeps* were actually that--as if curse words were being censored. Then the standard recorded instructions on how to leave a message play.

Now some people would be angry or upset that someone hacked into their phone voicemail like that and changed the message, but I thought this was hilarious! I plan to leave it on there, because it's better than any message I could think up to put on. I'm going to call it again later and try to write down the exact message 'cause I think it's so funny!

I don't know who the hacker is, but at least he has a sense of humor...and I don't get any really personal messages anyway (usually get none at all) so I don't even care if he can hear any messages left! So I just want to say "Thank You", mystery phone hacker, for giving me a laugh!

And speaking of laughing, here's another of "Harold's Planet" cartoons. Which I always find funny.

Check out www.haroldsplanet.com/daily.htm for more about Harold's adventures, or to see the archived strips.