I only say this because there's no identifier to differenciate a real phone number from a test one. Subscribers often called to report those gibberish text messages they received. It's always a dev entering an incorrect number while testing.
In case anyone else here is curious, the ACMA maintains a list of reserved numbers for use in creative works, which you can use for dummy data: https://www.acma.gov.au/phone-numbers-use-tv-shows-films-and...
Our CTO had to personally apologise to him
I wonder how common something like this is.
That was one number we were told to stop using at Internode. I heard similar stories from Optus and Telstra employees.
Sometimes enthusiastic or particularly bored developers do put in the effort to write things out like a real message though.
In my first job we had warehouse management system, and for testing new versions we allowed users to log-in to test environment.
Some employees didn't knew they were supposed to only log in to prod and happily worked in their warehouse accepting deliveries, stocktaking, moving stuff in real world using test db instead of the prod one. We only realized when they moved so much stuff that the inconsistencies db vs reality triggered alarms.
I am more surprised that mobile plans are still charging by the minute. A "toll quality" 64kbps audio stream is 480KB per minute. More advanced codecs use a fraction of that.
At 50 Mbps, you can theoretically exhaust this in just over six days. At 1 Gbps, it takes less than eight hours.
Once shaped—a month of 1 Mbps is less than 335 GB.
So in practice all these unlimiteds boil down to less than 4TB/month.
For 8.25 EUR/month, you get 250 GB of data per year, and for 12.40 EUR 450 GB/year.
Well, not with that attitude! Initiate a 139-party conference call from your phone and you'll just about make it.
> Before I continue, I will answer the obvious question: Did I actually receive 999999 minutes? Yes, indeed I did. But unfortunately, I was only given 7200 minutes to spend my 999999 minutes and I could only spend them 1 minute at a time.
It's vanishingly rare for me. I got a call from a friend today - but I think I otherwise only make or receive a legit phone call every few days. We use social media mostly. Work "calls" are on apps.
A family could probably get away with 2 phones easily, as long as they have home internet.
Now... When I was young and internet was over dial-up, having a single phone line for our whole family caused quite a lot of spats.
And while the amount is not a large one, it is still very suspicious this keeps going on, even after two very long calls with the support. I'm going to soon speak to the partner network, but it is appalling how much these people are not interested in who actually gives their enterprise money. They're only there to take it.
Why should they be?
In more than a few jurisdictions you can pay utilities or property taxes via an online portal without logging in. You just pull up a property, click "make a payment", and enter an amount along with a payment method into the portal. If you were to use a gift card for a utility payment I believe all they'd have is a browser fingerprint and an IP address. But why should that be an issue?
Especially the emails, resending me literally the same offer of a 5€ rebate per month five times is just offensive spam. The other ones were just variations of the same offer with different styling.
This seems like some sort of punishment those monks that stand in one place and pray until their feet wear holes in the floor would use. Mint Mobile is like $15 a month.
No, you're right.
If my choice were to worry about first-tier direct customers kicking me off cell towers at stadiums and public events, or worry about whether wife-husband-son SIM card would make it home in time for my work trip, it would be a pretty easy one.
“Hey, give people a billion dollars of credits for the next 17 seconds. Oh!, make it look like a mistake too!”