Since about 19;00 last night Mrs. Pinkster’s mobile phone has been inundated with literally hundreds of blank text messages.

They’ve been coming in every 30 seconds or so, nothing on them and from a number that’s not recognised. She switched it off after a little while but turning it on again this morning to find over 500 of the little monsters waiting for her.

I’ve tried calling the number from another phone and it rings about 6 times then I get a continuous tone like I’ve been hung up on.

Anyone got any idea what’s going on? Mrs.P. needs her phone for work amongst other things and this is making it a little tricky for her a the mo’.

I’ve tried googling it but not found anything.

Aliens.tin foil hat required…….

Sounds like an automated system somewhere has gone of the fritz.

Might be worth a call to her provider. They might be able to block the number, perhaps?

contact phone company.

just in case your being billed, could be a scam.

I would like to think the phone service provider you use could block the texts and shed some light on whats going on.

Cheers Cougar, I kinda thought that too but it’s a mobile number, not a landline or 0800/0845 type number. IIRC it starts 07791. Must be costing someone a fortune if they’re doing this to a few folks.

almost certainly them.

We have had the same here on several works phones.
All on Orange if that helps explain.

Think we’ll do that tonight, thanks. not sure how she can be billed for receiving texts but mobile telecoms work in mysterious ways.

It’s a PAYG phone so she won’t lose much, it’s more the annoyance. I’ve already suggested she get’s a new SIM but that causes the usual with telling everyone might be the only option though if her provider can’t do anything.

Annie’s on Virgin – do they share networks? I’m a bit clueless on this TBH.

Keef – Member
Aliens.tin foil hat required…….

Tried that, didn’t work. 🙁

There are premium rate text services out there, you get charged a normal text rate + £1.50 for information.

Text checks on car history etc etc. Unlikely but possible you may be billed, so worth checking out, due to volume of texts it should be obvious that there machine has gone wrong.

PAYG, if no credit phone shouldn’t accept messages then 🙂
Maybe a new sim/number is the way to go if no one admits to a fault.

IIRC it starts 07791

All on Orange if that helps explain.

0779x is Orange (unless it’s been ported elsewhere).

I was going to ask about the number. Not all 07xxx codes are mobile numbers, there’s also 070 which is a “Personal Number.” These things can be up to something like 50p/min to call, and are often scammy as they’re easily confused with mobile numbers.

Ah right.

I know she won’t have been texting premium rate numbers for car history etc (she would n’t know how to TBH).

Still don’t understand how someone calling her phone unsolicited would end up costing her money. 😕

Can someone else clone her number then do it?

Company that . Used to work for had an automated renewal email when your ad was due to expire. You replied and it did it for you.

A developer made a change and didn’t test it out tell anyone. It looped on a Saturday night. Some poor bloke in Cardiff got spammed until about9am Monday.

idea how many texts he got but we got a bill for £1800 from the co we used to forward the texts. Pls about 10,000 real texts didn’t go out so that cost a lot too in non renewed ads

Contact your phone company ASAP.

My mum had this happen a few months back. £4500 had been charged to her account. Vodaphone wrote it off fairly quickly. Texts were orginating in NZ of all places.

It’s some sort of scam / fraud. She never found out how it worked, but someone is making money out of it.

Does someone not like her? It could be a Text Bomb, some silly burstard mucking about…

It could be a Text Bomb

Didn’t Tom Jones do a song about that?

Has she upset her lover?

Cheers guys, especially Samuri. 😉

I’ve told her to contact virgin but it’ll probably end up me having to do it this afternoon. when she turned her phone on last night there were still a load there, which make me think that it may not be a callback charging scam as she would have run out of money by now.