I think I may have taken one selfie in my life, excepting all the ones I was dragged into, so I'm not exactly an expert on the subject. I still know that selfies can be taken for all kinds of purposes - one of which is to keep the photos on your own phone, something that dwindling phone memory doesn't make easy.
Now that my phone is a few years old, I swear it's trying to (not very subtly) nudge me into getting an upgrade. At least once a week I'm getting a message about how I'm running out of storage, even though I have barely any apps and regularly move photos and videos onto my PC. One thing I haven't tried out is storing them in a different way, like how you can store photos on other apps without having to keep them on your phone's internal storage.
23-year-old Umulkhayr Hussein used this method to keep her selfies on her phone. Hussein, who is working on her Masters in International Communications and Development in London, tends to send photos to herself on WhatsApp - a smart way to save memory. However, this unfortunately led to a very awkward situation with a complete stranger.
As it turns out, there was someone else on the other side of these messages. Rather than sending them to herself, she had gotten one of the digits in her number wrong, accidentally inputting a random person's number. Eventually, she got a response, at which point she realised her mistake.
Imagine how confusing it would be to receive several selfies, ask them who they are, and get the response "It's me - who are you?"
Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Hussein revealed that the number only became active in December last year - but that still means they had received months of photos from a woman they didn't know.
"That was pretty much our entire conversation," Hussein said. "Don't see myself reaching out either, I'm still way too embarrassed. Not a clue why they didn't say anything sooner though!"
She later tweeted about the encounter, posting a screenshot of the brief conversation with the mystery person on the other end of the line. It soon went viral, with 10,000 retweets and over 32,000 likes. "I saved my number so I could send photos to myself," she wrote, "and it turns out I got ONE DIGIT wrong and I was sending my selfies to a complete stranger."
"Responses are quite varied; some are really curious as to why I'd send photos to myself and others love to give unwarranted tech advice," Hussein said. As you can see, the replies show just how much cringing and laughter she brought to the internet that day.
So, if you ever decide to try out Umulkhayr's phone hack, be certain you've typed your own number in correctly - otherwise you could end up in an awkward position.
