Teen Gets Prime Minister's Phone Calls

from the ooops dept

Fri, Jul 30th 2004 1:35pm — Mike Masnick

Recycling of phone numbers is not a new thing. My home phone, for instance, used to be the phone number for the local social security office, apparently. I get a fairly frequent stream of calls (even if I've had the number for many years already) from people trying to reach social security. Nowadays, the problem tends to come from recycling of mobile phone numbers. There was the well-publicized story of Chris Rock's old mobile phone number going to some woman. In the UK, there are problems with people receiving expensive premium SMS services they never ordered, but which were set up by the previous owner of the same number. Now, in Norway, a 16-year-old girl is receiving phone calls meant for the country's Prime Minister, after he ditched his mobile number, and it was recycled to her. How often do you get to say "sorry, wrong number," to leaders around the world?

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dorpus, 30 Jul 2004 @ 2:52pm

Foreign prank calls
One woman told me a story of a radio DJ in Ireland who made up a random number in the USA, and promised some sort of vacatgion grand prize to people who called the number, so she kept getting all these (often lewd) phone calls from Ireland.

I got burned once by an international collect call from Japan, which I took to be a family emergency, but turned out to just be a prank call, and got charged $15 for it. I've learned to refuse international collect calls since, and they have been attempted. Although, I did once get a call from a young woman in Dubai about an ad for an apartment I posted on the net, near Washington's Dulles Airport.
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dorpus, 30 Jul 2004 @ 3:04pm

Oh and
I got a phone call from a Norwegian Buddhist who had issued death threats, because he was unhappy at the comments I made about Buddhism on a newsgroup. He didn't make good on the death threat part though.
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- Adam, 31 Jul 2004 @ 12:43am
  
  the girl who had chris rock's number
  those stories don't look legit at all. why would jerry seinfeld's office call chris rock's personal cell phone numbers to get tickets to his show? makes no sense.
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- Anonymous Coward, 1 Aug 2004 @ 3:47pm
  
  Re: Oh and
  SHAME ON THAT NORWEIGIAN BUDDIST FOR NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH !
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