I've never listed my mobile number anywhere on the internet, and as far as I remember I've only ever shared it with friends and family. On the other hand, I've had the same number for years and its possible that its 'leaked'; But I still find it quite odd that people around the world manage to get their hands on the number, with no real effort. And that means I get calls.

Calls from people in Argentina at 4am UK time, wanting to know when php-5.4 is going to be released into CentOS-5. Calls from people in the UK, at 8am wanting to know if the httpd update released last night had a fix for CVE-XXX. Calls from people in India at 10pm UK time wanting to find out if the sound card on the motherboard they bought a few hours back, is supported on CentOS. A disgruntled passenger trying to check-in to their flight the next day, and the system throwing up a 'Apache on CentOS' page.

Some are a bit more alarming. eg. a call from people at a Large Defence Contractor in the USA asking who their 'CentOS Technical Account Manager' was and if I knew what the SLA terms were. Or the time when I got a call from a hosting company's Data Center saying there was a fire in the DC and they wanted to know if their CentOS backups were intact.

It's not something new, I've had these calls over the years from maybe 2008 or so. At one point, when it was really hectic with almost 10 to 12 calls a week, in 2010 I was seriously considering changing my number. Just doing the 'ignore if the number isnt in the address book' wasent scaling for me. But I didnt, the process of changing my number with everyone I knew was too much hassle, so I started giving people an alternative number and mostly started ignoring the 'popular' old mobile number. The number of such calls has now drastically reduced. I get maybe 1 or 2 in a week and in many cases I answer them and have had the odd interesting conversation. But realistacally, I think the time has come to change that number.

What I will, however, do is offer up a Voip line : +44-207-0999389 ; This terminates at a phone that I have on my desk. And I will try to make sure its turned on whenever I am doing CentOS stuff, or am in 'Open Source' mode. Go ahead, use that number - give me a call and if I am around, would love to have a chat. But please stop calling me on my mobile.

btw, I have tried to find my own number and failed to do so - even entering parts of the numbers into the various search engines does not bring up my mobile number. So, I have no idea where all these people suceed in finding it ?

- KB