Joe M. Douglass reports:
…Tomi told Joe she lost her phone last summer after her husband passed away in a motorcycle accident. She says she decided to give up her old phone number and ended up using her late husband’s phone instead.
Last week, Tomi says three of her family members got strange, nonsensical text messages from her old phone number. After her relatives called the number, Barnes spoke on the phone with Verizon Wireless. She says Verizon said the old number had been assigned to a new customer. Tomi told Joe her contacts and personal information, stored on the “Verizon backup assistant cloud service”, had been downloaded into the other customer’s phone.
Joe Douglass made repeated calls to Verizon. The company sent a statement a short time ago.
“We have corrected this regrettable, isolated error and are investigating the cause. We recently upgraded our backup systems and policies to increase privacy protections.”
SOURCE: KATU.