Weird

[podknocker]

Any advice on this would be really appreciated.

My friend gave me a Nokia 3310 phone about 3 years ago, the bright orange one. It had a 3 SIM card in it, so I moved my Vodafone number to this and it's worked fine.

I changed from PAYG to a monthly contract and I've just renewed this and I'm into my 2nd 24 month contract.

I have just bought an unlocked smartphone and took the SIM card out of the old Nokia, popped the nano SIM out of the micro SIM cradle, put this into my new smart phone and it works fine. I can make calls and texts etc.

The first weird thing is that my new phone is showing the original SIM card number, so I've had to delete this and put in my number and that's worked. Is this normal for a phone to show the original SIM card number?

The second weird thing is that when I downloaded the Spotify app yesterday, it briefly showed my friends Spotify email address and then disappeared.

It then came up with the login boxes and I've entered my details and it's working and shows all my music playlists etc.

The only connection between my new, unlocked smart phone and his email address, is the SIM card which used to be in his old phone, before he gave it to me.

This old Nokia is now in a cupboard as a spare. It's not really internet friendly, but there is a chance he used this SIM in his own smart phone many years ago.

It's so weird. I'm thinking of asking my phone provider to send me a new SIM card and not have this old one in my new phone. I'm really worried there could be a data breach.

Has anyone any idea how the Spotify app would see the old SIM card number and then associate this with my friends account?

 

[DCarmi]

You can save contact details on a sim card. It used to be a common thing years ago because changing phones was much more of a painful process, then. With Android, Google have made it much harder to use the sim card as contact storage, for fairly obvious reasons (rich contact format, cloud backup and increasing usage of eSims). I don't know about Apple, but I would be surprised if it is not the same.

I am guessing that your friend also stored his contact details as the default for the sim. I am also guessing you have not set your contact details up as the default, in your smart phone. I suspect Spotify is was trying to be helpful by working out who you are and came across the default details stored in the sim and then deciding the contact data was not good enough. Spotify does have permission to access contacts, by default.

Your old Nokia will have means to manage the contacts on the sim card, probably easier than the new smart phone. Getting a replacement sim would be a good alternative. I've done this in the past and it did not take the person in the shop long to sort out. You might have to wait an hour for the sim to activate, though. Check with 3.

 

[podknocker]

You can save contact details on a sim card. It used to be a common thing years ago because changing phones was much more of a painful process, then. With Android, Google have made it much harder to use the sim card as contact storage, for fairly obvious reasons (rich contact format, cloud backup and increasing usage of eSims). I don't know about Apple, but I would be surprised if it is not the same.

I am guessing that your friend also stored his contact details as the default for the sim. I am also guessing you have not set your contact details up as the default, in your smart phone. I suspect Spotify is was trying to be helpful by working out who you are and came across the default details stored in the sim and then deciding the contact data was not good enough. Spotify does have permission to access contacts, by default.

Your old Nokia will have means to manage the contacts on the sim card, probably easier than the new smart phone. Getting a replacement sim would be a good alternative. I've done this in the past and it did not take the person in the shop long to sort out. You might have to wait an hour for the sim to activate, though. Check with 3.

Thanks. Really appreciate your reply. I've worked in IT for over 20 years and I do think I'm technically minded, but this stuff with phones does confuse me sometimes. I wish I knew much more about how phone networks, security and SIM cards work. It's scary when you see other people's email accounts on your brand new phone. I will get a new SIM and burn the other one. It feels like I have a satanic SIM card and I don't trust it! Thanks again.

 

[DCarmi]

I will get a new SIM and burn the other one.

Probably a wise move!

The SIM contains various unique IDs which allow you to connect to your provider (or associated providers if roaming) so basically it just tells the provider which account is being used and hence what services you are entitled to.

The SIM can usually hold about 250 contacts in a basic format. Because people tend to use rich contact formats including such things as Twitter and Facebook handles, it does not really get used these days for this purpose.

The SIM card is being phased out in favour of the eSim, embedded in the phone itself. In the US the iPhone 14 only comes with eSim. The next standard is likely to be the iSim which does the same job, more securely and embedded in the SoC, taking up the space of little more than a pin head.