online voice mail

Author: Govt.
A voice-mail system is a complex phone answering machine (run by a computer) which allows individuals to send and receive telephone voice messages to a specific "mailbox" number. A person can call the voice-mail system (often a 1-800 number) and leave a message in a particular person's mailbox, retrieve messages left by other people, or transfer one message to many different mailboxes in a list. Usually, anyone can leave messages, but it takes a password to pick them up or change the initial greeting. The system turns the user's voice into digital information and stores it until the addressee erases it or another message overwrites it. Criminals sometimes use voice mailboxes (especially, if they can beat the password, those of unsuspecting people) as remote deaddrops for information that may be valuable in a criminal case. The server for the voice mailboxes is usually located in the message system computer of the commercial vendor which supplies the voice-mail service. Sometimes it can be found on the customer-organization's computer server at the location called. Voice mail messages can be written on magnetic disk or remain in the computer's memory, depending on the vendor's system.....[MORE]