Nearly lost a friend,
about 18 months ago, when I began having problems with the credit on my little Sagem phone. Up until then, I'd never had any problems with it - it was a second-hand freebie a mate had gotten bored with, it was nearly indestructible (to demonstrate this, my mate threw it at concrete, whereupon the only damage was a slight chip of the paintwork). I didn't have any problems staying within my prepaid limit and it took me ages to use it up! Put it this way, 10 quid would last me about 6 weeks.

Then over the summer, my credit would disappear, in a matter of days. This was a problem because I was in melbourne with my sister, and my parents were in South Australia on holidays, and meant I had no way of contacting them. This happened continually over the summer, I went and had my phone looked at, and the man said I should try not to send so many texts and that my problem would go away. When I told him I'd only been in contact with my parents and my sister for the essentials such as "just got off the train, can't find you yet." he just shrugged.

Okay, thinks I, and I go back to school, only to find my mate J won't speak to me, won't look at me. I'm hauled into my year level coordinator's office and raked over the coals as to why I'd been harassing my mate for the duration of the holidays. Apparently he'd been recieving hundreds of messages insulting him and abusing him, and I'd had no clue. Cue me, very confused and upset, and heading straight to the phone shop after school, wanting to know how it was possible, when the only texts I could recall sending were "merry christmas" and "happy new year!".

It was my sim card. Apparently it was a very old one and was thus, unsecured. This meant that anybody who had the right knowledge and equipment/software was able to use my number and my credit to send texts to anybody they liked. Because all my numbers were on my sim card, it had been a walk in the park for them to harass my friend. Once the technician had worked it out, I was promptly given a new, secured simcard.

Moral of the story: keep your damn simcards up to date if you can. Otherwise this bullshit can happen all too easily to you too.
(Poppet some assembly required., Sun 2 Aug 2009, 2:51, 1 reply)

That's a good but sad story :(

( Major Turd for tonight only, Sun 2 Aug 2009, 5:05, closed)