Weird thing happened...can mobile numbers be stolen/hacked?

raggydoll_2

Hope this is the right place for this, i wasn't too sure.

A weird thing happened to my husband this evening. He left his workmate A and drove home. On the way home he received a text, pulled over and read it. It was from A's phone and said "Who is this?" He thought this was odd as A clearly has his number so replied "Its N, why?" to which he got the response "U just text my phone thats all". Thinking this was really odd as he hadn't text him at all he called him. A was totally baffled. Not only did A not send wither of the messages, his phone was in his pocket the whole time so no one else could have sent them either.

I asked hubby whether A had checked whether the sent messages were on his phone but he didn't know.

Should we be concerned about this? Is it some sort of scam? It seems really bizarre and i can't think of an explanation

Airwolf1

Was it a message that hubby sent earlier, but it had only just been received on recipient's phone.

Obi167

was the number the same as his workmates (not just the name)

kandyfloss

I had this happen to me the other Christmas I got umpteen messages come through on my mobile from what seemed like a young teenager trying to contact friends and couldn't understand why they were not replying to their text messages.

I spent a small fortune texting back to tell them they had got the wrong person and to stop sending them to my number.Ther penny finally dropped so to speak.My hubby reckoned that the friends number must have been close to mine in digits apart from probably the last one and the sender in their rush to talk about Christmas arrangements hadn't realised that they were texting the wrong person.A bit like when we get a wrong number on the landline at home.

Thinking about it with the Millions of mobile phone numbers generated there must be a bit of an overlap with the numbers.

This is only our assumtion with what happened and since then have never had a problem and hope that eventually the right friends were contacted.

Hope you get your mystery sorted....

supermonkey

There are sites out there that allow you to spoof messages.

In other words they make it look like you're texting one number when you're not. There are also email ones too which in the wrong hands are very dangerous!

raggydoll_2

Airwolf1 wrote: »

Was it a message that hubby sent earlier, but it had only just been received on recipient's phone.

No he hasn't text him for weeks, he see's him almost every day anyway. But even if he had text him A would have known who it was texting.

Obi167 wrote: »

was the number the same as his workmates (not just the name)

Yes name and number were both correct and came up as if it was coming from his phone as usual.

supermonkey wrote: »

There are sites out there that allow you to spoof messages.

Perhaps this is it, pretty pointless message to send though, they didn't say anything

Thanks for your thoughts anyway.....mystery!

Nikabella

I had a weird experience like this back at the beginning of the year. I was out shopping with my OH for a dress for the races & so we were taking pictures of the dresses & sending them via MMS to my dad's mobile phone. My mum was then able to text us back her opinion on the dresses.

Half way through the shopping trip I got a weird text from a number I didn't recognise saying "I can't open the picture you have sent me", so I replied saying that I hadn't sent them a picture. I then checked my sent messages & reports which clearly showed that the only person I had sent messages to all day was my dad/mum. I asked the person who they were & this turned into a weird conversation of us trying to establish if we knew each other, which we didn't!

Normally I would have thought that it was just their error, as I don't tend to send picture messages, but seeing as they sent their message in the middle of the one day in which I sent about 10 MMS it seems like a bit of a coincidence. Weird, never did get to the bottom of it!

david89999

I'm always texting my wife, from my pocket. There is a short cut to write a text, and she is first in the address book. Only needs to press three or four buttons and she gets a blank text.

wannabe_sybil

My friend had her mobile cloned by the IRA, back in the days when they were blowing people up. The first she knew about it was when a large contingent of police turned up without an invitation.

I think the technology may have moved on since then.

sophie131

My mobile has managed to phone my mum whilst turned off and locked in my work locker.
I have also called my Dad and not only had him answer but also a bewildered mad thinking we were playing a prank!

flossy_splodge

Two possibles I can think of.

1. Bluetooth. If you have bluetooth on your phone and you haven't 'hidden' it?

2. Mobile numbers ARE re-used. Yours may have been reissued in error?

The wonderful world of technology....:eek: