The present invention provides a method and apparatus to activate or deactivate a web interface to a voicemail system through a telephone user interface to the voicemail system. During a setup procedure that runs on the first use of the telephone user interface, the method and apparatus asks the subscriber if the subscriber wants the web interface activated. The method and apparatus then activates the web interface and allows the subscriber to specify a sequence of both digits and letters as the subscriber's initial web password and username. The present invention also provides the capability to activate or deactivate the web interface via the telephone user interface at any time after the initialization.