Almost everyone has a phone nowadays, high schoolers especially. In fact, there are more mobile phones than people in the world. However, one thing has changed in the last decade. We no longer identify people by their phone numbers. We communicate through apps and social media, so things like giving out your number can seem like a thing of the past.

This story from 2012 entails a fun mishap about the times when people used to change their phone numbers and a person could have ended up with someone else’s old number. When it happened to this person and hordes of girls kept texting them every day, they decided it was enough. So, they came up with a revenge plan, and they shared their success story with people online.

Bored Panda got in touch with the author of this story, u/Steeltoe_0nesie. They kindly agreed to tell us more about how they figured out who the number belongs to, what was the breaking point that led to their petty revenge, and whether they have any regrets today. Read our conversation with the Redditor below!

One person became the new owner of a popular kid’s old number and would get texts from unrelenting high school girls

Image credits: ArtemVarnitsin (Not the actual photo)

So, they decided to prank them and get revenge on the dude who was still giving out his old number

Image credits: Asterfolio (Not the actual photo)

Image credits: Steeltoe_0nesie

An embarrassing call during class was the last straw for the new number owner

The author tells Bored Panda that they started getting random texts from girls and asked them who they were. That’s how they deduced who this new number belonged to previously.

“I started asking the girls who were texting me who they thought they were texting and how old they were, then googled the guy and put it together. He was well-known in local high school hockey at the time.”

u/Steeltoe_0nesie recalls how the hockey player’s mom butt-dialed them during class one day. That was when they decided enough is enough. “The mom butt-dialed me several times in those first few weeks,” the Redditor tells Bored Panda.

“Once, during the middle of a college class – it was so embarrassing, I called her back to let her know that she kept butt-dialing the wrong number and she yelled at me for complaining about it.”

“That and all of the girls who kept texting were also rude/mad that they were getting the kid’s old number, as if I was responsible for that.” But the Redditor was just as frustrated as the girls – he obviously wasn’t in on it.

The author of this story feels like parents should teach their kids not to be jerks like the hockey player was to those girls

The author also feels like the hockey player was acting like an entitled jerk. “I feel like humanity hasn’t gotten that much better at this kind of thing, and that apathy toward society as a whole could use a significant course correction. Kids growing up in ‘good’ homes with well-off parents and their mothers in the home, while treating dozens of girls like this who he sees every day.”

“These girls were this kid’s neighbors, they were daughters to women his mother is community with. I don’t know if I can say I’ve seen any societal improvement on what I witnessed unnecessarily out of that kid, and I can’t say I’m surprised that he’s like that, either,” the Redditor adds.

He says that neglect from parents is a major reason situations like these happen in the first place. “Adults actually do not know what’s best for their kids, or we’d be better off as a society in general,” he told us.

“Anything parents can do to be more present in their children’s lives is a blessing, and parental apathy can potentially affect generations of adults in how they contribute to the world around them.”

“I’d say parents should be more present, more instructional, more empathetic not only to their children but also to other people’s children who may be suffering at the hands of their own kids. ‘It takes a village,’ as the quote goes, and we need to learn more [about] that than ever before.”

Image credits: Oyemike Princewill (Not the actual photo)

Mobile phone service providers recycle numbers to prevent ‘number exhaustion’

If you’ve ever had to change your phone number, you’re probably familiar with the hassle. You have to inform all your contacts that you’re no longer reachable on the old one and let them know the new one. You also have to update your contact information on lots of websites and apps.

Other times, people start getting random calls and texts from people they don’t know. Just like in this story. That’s actually a pretty common occurrence if you’ve ever had to get a new phone number. And it happens because phone numbers actually get recycled. According to the FCC, providers recycle around 100k numbers a day. That’s almost 35 million each year.

So, it’s no surprise that people can end up with someone else’s number, and that someone else might be a person they know. Telecoms deactivate or disconnect a number when a customer no longer uses their services. Then, they reactivate it and reassign it to a new customer.

Providers do this because there is a finite number of possible phone number sequences. Also, the number of customers grows every year. So, telecoms opt to reassign old numbers to new customers.

The period of time between the old and the new owner depends on the provider. UK telecom provider O2, for example, waits 12 months until they recycle an old number. Telesign claims it can take as little as 90 days, and in areas like Manhattan or Los Angeles, where demand is extra high, it’s often even faster.

Number recycling poses security risks for customers

No matter how much time passes between you deactivating your number and getting a new one, experts say that people who have had their phone number reassigned should be aware of the privacy risks number recycling poses.

In 2021, researchers at Princeton University sampled 259 phone numbers. 219 of those were recycled, they found. The most worrying revelation they made was that people’s personally identifiable information (PII) was available after their old numbers were recycled.

Out of the 259 numbers the researchers sampled, 171 were vulnerable to account hijacking on sites like Amazon, Facebook, Google, PayPal, and Yahoo. 100 numbers appeared in leaks online, rendering two-factor identification virtually ineffective.

However, these aren’t the only privacy and safety threats number recycling poses. New number owners might become victims of phishing attacks, get harassed with spam messages and calls, or even fall victim to online account hijackings. The previous owners of the number can also face safety issues, especially if they changed their number to avoid stalkers and abusers.

Image credits: Nathan Dumlao (Not the actual photo)

The author clarified some things in the comments

People congratulated the person on their whimsical revenge and shared their adventures of getting random phone calls

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