Maybe you’re still confused about the whole “hackgate” scandal in the United Kingdom, where the News of the World tabloid hacked cell phone voicemail messages to get inside information. Perhaps our guide to the scandal was just too dense. Well, here’s an even simpler proposition: one simple infographic to explain the whole thing.
The infographic was created by security firm Veracode, in conjunction with Infographic World, and used here with permission. Veracode’s Niru Raghavan explained why they created the infographic in an email to me:
To answer your question about why we created it, the answer is threefold. First, we are an application security company so stories with a data security angle are always of interest to us. Secondly, many reports on the News of the World scandal pointed to the fact that very often consumers don’t bother to change their mobile voicemail passwords from the standard “0000.” This leaves them vulnerable to unauthorized access to their private voice-mail messages. We think that’s a fact worth getting out there and hopefully it will encourage consumers to change those passwords to something more secure. And lastly, we created the infographic because we feel telling this story in this pictorial style makes it more interesting for readers.
Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments below.
Infographic by Veracode Application Security
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+
