Mobile provider accessing phone

Gatling

Here is an odd one ,

A colleague in work was signed up to a TV provider and eventually switched to another provider with no monies owed and equipment returned via courier ,
Now 12 months later she's getting calls on her mobile(same provider but her phone is only recently signed up to ) from the previous providers debt collection department say she owes several hundred euros , she explained no money was owed and had a receipt to show the equipment (TV box was returned ) as per agreement,
Ok all good ,
Now the Calls have started again but here's the issue the company is some how accessing this lady's contact list and ringing her example her phone rings Gatling calling appears on her ohiney with my correct number but when she answers hi Gatling she then gets hi this is joe from this companies debt collection department ,
She hangs up the following day in work the lady's phone rings , displaying mum and her mum's number as standard on the phone ,hi mum rapidly followed by hi it's Paul from companies debt collection department .

It seems somehow this company can access her phone and ring her displaying numbers from her contact list but when she answers it's this particular company again.

This can't be above board ?

jaxxx

If that's legal then I'm 6' 4" with 12 pack abs. There's no way in hell that that can be right.

yellowlabrador

I installed whatsup to keep in contact with someone and since then I get the same type of calls from callcentres. A name from my contact list will appear when the phone rings and I get a sales person. I think you end up giving these apps so many rights and they can sell your info. So check all the permissions on apps.

whomitconcerns

Yeh... This isn't possible unless you have some bogey app on your Phone or duplicate numbers. This is not the phone or TV companies fault. Your phone has technical issues

L1011

This would be the phone not handling calls with blanked (rather than withheld) numbers properly most likely

Caller ID is completely and utterly untrustworthy

GerardKeating

Gatling wrote: »

It seems somehow this company can access her phone and ring her displaying numbers from her contact list but when she answers it's this particular company again.

This can't be above board ?

What you describe above is not possible, but what is possible is that they have Caller ID blank, (so you don't know who is calling) and your phone displays random entries from your contacts when it has blank Caller ID, so an issue with the phone rather that sharp practice from the debt collectors

kirving

If she has an Android, or Samsung specifically, the automatic caller ID can have errors.

Say I get a call from a random number which is not in my phonebook, the phone will check online for a name associated with that number.

They complication comes because the database that the phone looks up is compiled from the phonebooks of other people like me who have signed up to this service.

In my case, someone somewhere has saved my employers trunk phone line, in their phone, as the name of a former colleague of mine.

So now, if I get a call from someone in meeting room in work (that just has the trunk line phone number, not a specific extension), it shows on my phone as my former colleagues name.

The debt collection agency could be changing their name in this database to Mum, or may plainly be spoofing their caller ID, which is very easy to do. It's possible, but unlikely that they've got access to the phone itself.



I also had another case on my own phone, when I typed my friends phone number into my phone, (as in 0871234....) a different name would show up in the quick search function.

This new name was not in my phonebook, could not be searched for by name, and was not in any other service or contact list connected to my phone.

To this day I can't figure out how it got there. Wiping my phonebook and refreshing from my online backup solved it. I can only guess it was a database screw up somehow.