I only say this because there's no identifier to differenciate a real phone number from a test one. Subscribers often called to report those gibberish text messages they received. It's always a dev entering an incorrect number while testing.
In case anyone else here is curious, the ACMA maintains a list of reserved numbers for use in creative works, which you can use for dummy data: https://www.acma.gov.au/phone-numbers-use-tv-shows-films-and...
I wonder how common something like this is.
That was one number we were told to stop using at Internode. I heard similar stories from Optus and Telstra employees.
Our CTO had to personally apologise to him
The bank forgot it had customers in a Crown Dependency. It forgot those countries issues their own ID, their own passports, their own drivers' licences. It forgot it closed its branches in those countries: it told me I had to go into my branch. My nearest branch is a £200 airfare away. It was not paying, naturally.
The crappy online-verification tool only recognises UK documents. It can't handle Isle of Man ones. They did not think.
Unfortunately, that was a real phone number in many cities, you could dial the short/local number directly without a 0 and the area code back then. Cue prank calls across the country and quite a few scandals since the topic of the song was, after all, the sex trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny#Popularity_and_...
I am one.
I have never visited California or the West Coast of the USA in my life.
But I have used dozens of websites which need a Zip code.
I have never had a Zip code. I have postcodes, like my old one IM2 3EW. That has letters. It won't fit a Zip code field.
So I and millions of others use the only Zip code we know:
Beverley Hills 90210.
Sometimes enthusiastic or particularly bored developers do put in the effort to write things out like a real message though.
In my first job we had warehouse management system, and for testing new versions we allowed users to log-in to test environment.
Some employees didn't knew they were supposed to only log in to prod and happily worked in their warehouse accepting deliveries, stocktaking, moving stuff in real world using test db instead of the prod one. We only realized when they moved so much stuff that the inconsistencies db vs reality triggered alarms.
(Also, people using it as a fake number for some appointment/reservation - which I sometimes update to change their name or add a special request :))