Sophie Highfield is a 30-year-old social manager who was shocked to find celebrity phone numbers on her phone. She found out that her phone mysteriously had different numbers from celebrities like Emma Bunton and David Walliams.
Highfield was soon shocked as she typed "M" on her phone to dial her mum, but found around 30 different numbers filed as mum. She then tried typing different letters into her address book and found numbers from celebrities, DJs and BBC staff members.
The Daily Mail chose celebrity names at random and verified them as genuine numbers. There were also numbers with +44 indicating UK numbers and +1 numbers indicating US numbers.
The phone was an Apple iPhone 5S which was gifted to her by her father in June 2014. The phone was brand new and untouched, but the issue started to occur on May 2016.
She also tried doing a factory reset for the phone, hoping that it would solve the problem. Resetting did not work, and she had to delete the contacts individually which took her half a weekend.
An article on Digital Spy mentions that experts say it is down to glitch in iCloud. Vladmir Katalov, CEO of software company ElcomSoft mentions that it must have been due to iCloud as the device had no previous owner.
Morgan Kemp, a cyber-security consultant of tech company Assuria mentioned that he has not heard of anything like it before. "A reset should solve the issue but clearly if it is not, that means there is some sort of automatic syncing," as he adds with regards to how it must have occurred.
No other contents were synced, such as WhatsApp messages. Apple told Highfield that they believe she has done nothing wrong with regards to the appearance of celebrity phone numbers and that she was not a victim of hacking.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
