Live data from Hacker News

She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

npr.org

51–60 of 112 posts

Re: She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

#52
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't that many phone numbers where it's reasonable to retire them willy-nilly (given the desire to have consistent "area codes").

You don't have to retire them for all eternity, just long enough that it stops getting a lot of contact.

Judging by Elon’s reaction, it’s been out of his hands for many years.

Re: She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to retire them for all eternity, just long enough that it stops getting a lot of contact.

Judging by Elon’s reaction, it’s been out of his hands for many years.

Well, longer then. And I imagine it's been active that many years, not getting "this subscriber is no longer available" or whatever.

Re: She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the messages suggests he still gives out this number.

This can be nasty. A friend of me once got a ton of phone calls for a specific realtor. Turns out the realtor made a misprint on their business card. The realtor didn't want to do the expense to print new business cards, so they were just going to give this card to everybody. Could he just forward everybody to them, and maybe fill in their customers on some basic information like opening hours and holidays etc. This…

Something similar happened to me, some shop misprinted some flyers and put our landline number on them. We got calls for years and sometime we still get some (you can infer how much time has passed since by the fact I'm talking about a landline)

Re: She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the messages suggests he still gives out this number.

This can be nasty. A friend of me once got a ton of phone calls for a specific realtor. Turns out the realtor made a misprint on their business card. The realtor didn't want to do the expense to print new business cards, so they were just going to give this card to everybody. Could he just forward everybody to them, and maybe fill in their customers on some basic information like opening hours and holidays etc. This…

This is related to how we got phone numbers in the first place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almon_Brown_Strowger#Rotary_di...

Re: She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

#58
post #4

I heard someone found shoes that Bill Gates once wore and a gum chewed by Steve Jobs. Both became relics and worshippers write articles about this in the internet. Seriously though - would someone think it was ok if I got a number after a local bakery owner and started sharing messages that were sent to me by mistake? Is this ok because EM is a more known person? I think it still falls under privacy standards.

Yeah, I find this article really distasteful. Being a public figure shouldn’t mean you have zero privacy.

Agreed. These messages are personal and are 100% intended to go to Elon Musk by the people sending them. Regardless of whether they had the wrong number or not, she doesn't have the right to go share them with NPR and the world.

Re: She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird

#60

However she got the number, she's got no intention of getting rid of it. Note that she has already provided it to many talent contacts. Plus, it's probably something that she's actually treasuring, at this point. I'll bet that she's quite warm and friendly to anyone that calls, no matter how bizarre. She's trying to break into a very competitive field, and every edge counts. This is a big one. If she has the talent t…

Yeah, she sounds like a chill person. I hope things work out for her.
Post reply on HN