Imagine that the new iPhone that you recently brought has mobile numbers of top celebrities including Adele and Nick Grimshaw? This is not a fable or fairy tale because the same has actually happened to a woman who bought a brand new iPhone 5S.
Sophie Highfield from Erdington, Birmingham, bought a new phone in June 2014 and after a while, she found that there were personal contact numbers of many celebrities stored in her phonebook. Some numbers began with the UK with starting code +44 while others were from the US since they displayed the starting code +1.
She found the presence of so many new contact names when she typed the letter M to search for her mom number and suddenly she saw numbers of four other “moms” appearing on her screen. She then started checking out other letters and with call them, she discovered numbers of popular personalities including television and music industry celebs, Olympic athletes and even Radio 1 DJs.
“I didn’t notice it at first because the contacts aren’t in my address book but when I go into messages to send a text and type in the letter ‘A’, it comes up with ‘A’ for Adele,” says Sophie.
Also included were somewhat weird contacts such as ‘Mark Pest Control,’ ‘Lev the Ledge,’ Kieran Window Cleaner,’ and ‘Suzie Next Door.’ Then there were numbers of BBC personnel and production team members of a number of popular TV shows including Britain’s Got More Talent and the Loose Women.
To our surprise, the 31-year old Highfield felt annoyed on receiving so many numbers of popular personalities without even asking for it. According to Highfield:
“It is quite annoying having them all there. The phone was supposed to be brand new and completely untouched. I actually have no idea how many numbers there are. There must be hundreds. I haven’t purchased these numbers they’ve just fallen into my hands.”