A family in South Shields, England, received texts from their deceased grandmother's phone number, but the incident proved to be a cruel joke and not some sort of supernatural phenomenon. With Halloween on the horizon, an English prankster concocted one of the meanest trick-or-treat type jokes I’ve ever come across. The odd story begins with the funeral of Lesley Emerson, a 59-year-old grandmother from South Shields, a community on the east coast of England. Emerson was a prolific texter, and her saddened family decided to bury her smartphone with her. As part of the grieving process, Emerson’s granddaughter, Sheri, and other relatives would occasionally text her. “Obviously we know that Nan wasn’t going to ever reply, it was just something we did as a comfort for ourselves because she loved to text,” Sheri Emerson told DailyMail.co.uk. Three years later, Emerson did receive a reply: “I’m watching over you, you’ll get through this, you’ll be alright”, the text read. “When the reply came through at lunchtime the following day I felt sick. Crazy stuff was flashing through my mind like ‘Is she still alive?'” Emerson said.”I started getting horrible visions that someone might have dug up her grave and taken her phone, my mind was full of all sorts of really unpleasant possibilities.” Her uncle called the phone and found that a wireless provider had issued the number to a new customer. The man said he thought that the texts to the dead woman were just a prank, so he replied in kind. Reassigning a number is routine, but doing something so insensitive is not. As newscaster Keith Olberman would say, he is “today’s worst person in the world.” Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe