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I know how you guys like solving a problem

RogerS

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Yesterday LOML was buying some stuff online when she got the OTP screen from Lloyds showing part of the number they were going to send the OTP to. She noticed that it was not her number. So she tried a different card and that went through OK.

Puzzled she looked at the account details on her Lloyds account and sure enough the number was not hers. So fearing a scam or fraud she contacted their fraud line but they couldn't really explain it but they would investigate and call her back. I suggested we rang the number and which we did. To my surprise, my 'spare' iPhone upstairs started ringing and yup, it was the number. Now this phone is rarely used, rarely switched on and often flat and spends its life buried beneath paperwork in a drawer.

So how on earth had that number got onto her account ?

The only place that number is stored anywhere is on my Mac.
Lloyds Bank do not have it. (or so we thought...see later)
Stella does not know the password to my Mac and so could not have got that number.
I do not know the password to her Mac but she does keep all her login details written down in a file somewhere in a chest of drawers in her bedroom.

So since she can’t possibly have changed the number and neither can Lloyds then the inescapable conclusion I could come to was that it was me. But to do this meant that I would have had to have looked up that phone number on my Mac, then gone into her room, searched through all the drawers to find her passwords, then gone downstairs, logged on to her Mac, logged in to her Lloyds account and altered the number. This would have had to have been done during the day since had I done it during the night, I would have woken her up. Unless she was totally out of it (it happens).

I have no recollection. It is possible, I guess, that I did do all of that in my sleep. I was concerned. And then .......

...today as we'd not heard anything from Lloyds, she called them back and spoke to a very helpful lady who told LOML that all the entries for her telephone number across all their systems was this 'wrong' number and that it had been updated in 2018 ! It's possible that LOML then changed it over in her profile to her actual mobile number sometime in the dim and distant past and simply forgotten about it.

But how did Lloyds get that number in the first place? We did swap over mobile providers back around that time. Possible that while waiting for her new phone that that SIM was used. Or that it was her number once...I certainly have no record of it...on the previous mobile provider ? But the number is 07708 and allocated to O2. She was with one of the others.

And here's the kicker. I contacted Giffgaff (who run on the O2 network) and asked how long that number had been active. 2022. But Lloyds claim to have had it in 2018. It doesn't make any sort of sense to me.
 
Rog, yopu have gone through the looking glass and are living in a parallel space time continuum. We are your only link with reality. :cool:
 
And here's the kicker. I contacted Giffgaff (who run on the O2 network) and asked how long that number had been active. 2022. But Lloyds claim to have had it in 2018. It doesn't make any sort of sense to me.
Is it possible that you had that number on an O2 (or any other network, really) SIM card in 2018, then ported it across to Giffgaff in 2022? It could well be that to them, 'active' means 'active in our systems' and they don't know or care if it was a valid number on any other carrier before then.

For the rest of it - has that phone always been your spare, or did it have another purpose in the past before being demoted to that job?
 
It's a good suggestion, Stephen, but as far as I can remember never had an O2 account/number. As far as the phone goes, it's always been a spare.
 
The bottom line, also, is that it was Lloyd's systems that decided to overwrite this datafield which doesn't inspire confidence.
 
The only other thing I can think of is that it's very easy to share info between Apple devices, we do it all the time between Iphines and Ipads though don't have a Mac. Is it possible that the phone has been active and the button on screen accidently pressed when it's popped up to share? Clutching at straws but if you do sleepwalk Stella needs to lock her door.
 
The only other thing I can think of is that it's very easy to share info between Apple devices, we do it all the time between Iphines and Ipads though don't have a Mac. Is it possible that the phone has been active and the button on screen accidently pressed when it's popped up to share? Clutching at straws but if you do sleepwalk Stella needs to lock her door.
She doesn't have an iPhone.
 
For various reasons I'm apparently a target for scammers etc. The consequence is that for near 20 years I have dumped my mobile numbers and disposable email / shopping addresses at approx 1-2 year intervals. Full deletion and start afresh. Various common social apps I don't use at all. New passwords bear no resemblance to old ones. Various other practices. It's quite cathartic to have a clear out. Recommended.

My wife and I were just remarking the other day how elderly people (generalising I know - I'm not being ageist but there is a culture) tend to give a lot of information away in things like their email addresses: eg emilyjames1947@yahoo.com. (Made up). In this case an elderly man who my wife was in contact with was unintentionally providing a lot of personal information via the nextdoor app. It's concerning as AI data harvesting and data matching gets cleverer.

From personal industry experience banks are not invincible. Systems are less disconnected I hope than they used to be, but systems still are somewhat disconnected and have a lot of old code.
 
For various reasons I'm apparently a target for scammers etc. The consequence is that for near 20 years I have dumped my mobile numbers and disposable email / shopping addresses at approx 1-2 year intervals. Full deletion and start afresh. Various common social apps I don't use at all. New passwords bear no resemblance to old ones. Various other practices. It's quite cathartic to have a clear out. Recommended.

My wife and I were just remarking the other day how elderly people (generalising I know - I'm not being ageist but there is a culture) tend to give a lot of information away in things like their email addresses: eg emilyjames1947@yahoo.com. (Made up). In this case an elderly man who my wife was in contact with was unintentionally providing a lot of personal information via the nextdoor app. It's concerning as AI data harvesting and data matching gets cleverer.

From personal industry experience banks are not invincible. Systems are less disconnected I hope than they used to be, but systems still are somewhat disconnected and have a lot of old code.
Precisely as it was Lloyds bank systems that decided to change the contact number. Now if only they would change my bank balance.
 
No shares set up or anything like that, Bob
Is the Mac different to Iphones and Ipads Roger? With the latter you just need to bring them close together and a window pops up asking if you want to share, no setting up. I did that only yesterday when I wanted a link from the wife's Ipad to my phone. As I said a single press of a button.

We've just had a replacement router from BT as they've changed to VOIP put the password into one Ipad and used that method to share on to the others, it's a long password to type. ;)
 
It behaves differently and also deoends on version of OSX.
 
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