[Corpora-List] Hacked email accounts (Bill Louw)

[John F. Sowa]

On 8/28/2011 2:37 PM, Susana M. Sotillo wrote:
> Another thing I have come across is rather puzzling to me, but perhaps
> some of you might have an answer for this.  When I went to a Verizon
> office to purchase an iPhone and transfer my contacts, all their
> addresses, including my son's, disappeared or appeared as messed up
> phone numbers.  However,  my stepdaughter's address and all her previous
> addresses in states where she had lived and served as part of the
> National Guard were prominently displayed. I can't quite figure this out.

I don't have any detailed information about the internal formats of
various telephone address books.  But I'd like to mention some info
about other kinds of software systems that may be relevant.

There are various standards for storing and interchanging information
among independently developed systems (for example, web browsers).
But there is usually a huge lag between the definition of a standard
and the completeness and correctness of all the implementations.

I suspect that the address book for your older phone was based
on an older standard that was only partially compatible with the
iPhone.  (Steve Jobs rarely tried to be compatible with software
developed by other companies.)

But it's possible that whatever software your stepdaughter used
did happen to use a standard that was in the intersection of
features compatible with both your old phone and the iPhone.

As I said, this is just my hypothesis.  But it is a simpler,
and I believe more likely, explanation than suspecting that
some government agency was involved with the transfer of data
from your old phone to the new one.

John

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