My 85-year-old dad has an O2 PAYG phone which he tops up every month. Recently, he noticed that his credit has been falling quicker than usual.
When I called to get him to check if he'd been ringing 08/09 numbers, he said he'd just gone out and bought a new phone. I thought nothing more about it. I turns out that he'd been sold a new phone, and transferred the SIM. The credit continued to fall faster than expected.
My dad went into the O2 Shop and asked about this. He told me that the people in the shop told him that he had probably given out his mobile number to someone dodgy over the internet, and they had used the credit on his SIM. They gave him a new SIM, and suggested he only gave his mobile number to reputable companies.
Now, this all sounds a bit strange to me. Surely people give out their mobile numbers all the time. How can this be exploited? Does anyone know what has likely happened here, and possibly the O2 staff meant?
