A lot of strange goings-on

[Mr Edward P Aveyard]

My phone has had a lot of problems recently. It could be a coincidence that all this has happened at once. I thought that I should check just in case my phone's been hacked or has some strange virus.

First, I keep losing reception on my phone completely. I'm sure now that this is not just a problem with my O2 network, as I live in a city of 700,000 people and there would surely be some anger on the internet (e.g. on Twitter) if everyone on O2 was being without signal regularly.

Around the same time that this started to happen, I keep getting phone calls from unknown numbers - sometimes here in the UK and sometimes in Germany. They usually ring whilst I'm at work so I miss them. They never leave a voicemail and seem to ring only for a few seconds. From a quick check, it's a different number each time.

A few weeks back, an unknown number sent me some text messages asking who I was and why I kept ringing him/her. I checked on my phone and I had never rung that number. I thought that was probably just some fool then, but then someone rang me today and asked why I had rung them. I checked and I had never rung them. This was the point when I started to think that for all this to happen at once is quite a coincidence.

Any ideas?

I am now planning to get a new phone. I had been wondering if I should keep the same phone and swap networks before, when I thought that the mobile reception was the main problem.

 

[Unforgiven]

We've been having issues with spammers ~ahem~ telemarketers here in the US spoofing numbers to try and get people to answer the phone. Hell, I even had one spoof that they were calling my house landline from my own house landline.

There is something in the works here in the US to hopefully prevent it. I wish I remembered the name, but the premise is that the calling phone and number generates a secure token that passes through the various carriers and arrives at the destination (called) phone. If the token has been compromised, the call is denied or flagged as a spoofed number.

I don't know if any of that helps you, but it sure sounds like that is phone number spoofing going on on your side of the pond too. :mad.

 

[Mr Edward P Aveyard]

Thanks for your answer. That sounds plausible.