Customers of New Zealand mobile phone carrier 2degrees got a surprise in the middle of the night when they received hundreds of text messages not intended for them.
The telecommunications company has said a software implementation caused the glitch in its system.
Cameron Guy and Tracy Daly were just two of the many customers who complained on 2degrees Facebook page and gaming forum GP Forums when they started receiving unusual messages around 2am on Wednesday.
But 2degrees had only responded to their posts yesterday afternoon, saying new software was being implemented at the time and resulted in the glitch.
"What is wrong with the network everyone's getting random txts im getting some crazy msgs and phonecalls," Daly wrote.
"Whats the deal, had 100s of texts and calls from randoms. Seriously annoying," Guy said.
2degrees spokesperson Michael Bouliane said engineers spotted the problem at around 1.30am and had it resolved by 2.30am.
He said the company usually made changes to its software in the middle of the night, in the middle of the week, when the system was being used by the least amount of people.
"I'm told only a small percentage of our customers were using the system last night and only a small fraction of them were impacted."
Bouliane wasn't aware of the exact number of people who were impacted.
"Its quite complicated to find the number of customers who sent texts and look at the numbers that received the texts and do the cross referencing - it's very technical."
He said 2degrees was looking into the issue and was trying to determine whether it was the software or implementation of it that caused the problem.
He said there were only a few customers that called to complain.
"They have every right to be concerned and we take their privacy very seriously," he said.
Stuff.co.nz