I agree that there is no privacy law violation, but it is a bit distasteful. We have some implicit standards in the society and it seems those are conveniently ignored at this point. There is some excuse given in the article in the form of "he probably gives out this number to people he does not wish to talk to", which I find a bit suspicious.

When I got letters to previous tenants at my current address I did not open them and share with everyone I met. I sent them to their new address.

My guess is that the real problem that was touched on is Mr. Musk gives the number out to get rid of unwanted contacts.

I had a number like this, except it was for a drug dealer with a similar area code, and most of the crazy texts and calls slowed down after a few months. I have a common name and get similar wacky emails. It's an impossible problem to solve when it is a problem.

Every couple of years stories like this come out. It's pretty common for celebrities to give out old numbers to undesirable contacts. There was a story in the NY papers a few years ago about a guy getting calls from one-night stand hookups of a musician. The musician gave out his number from 20 years ago because it sounded real.

I agree with you that it’s a bit distasteful. But on the other hand there was nothing revealed in the article that was terribly shocking. If that same article were about me instead of Elon Musk, I don’t think I would find it upsetting.

In the UK it's illegal to open someone else's mail even if it was delivered to you.

You can't see whom a text message is addressed to (besides the phone number, but that's obviously wrong here) if you don't actually read the text message. And if you get a letter that's not addressed to anyone but has your address on it, then it's obviously okay for you to open it.

This isn't mail.

I mean, when they say Elon, it's no longer exactly addressed to "the person residing at this address", right?

It's no different from sending an email to the wrong address. Disclaimers to the contrary, it isn't the responsibility of the recipient to ensure the address (phone number, in this case) is right.

There's no other metadata for text message recipient other than the phone number. You can't see that the sender fucked up before you actually read the text message.

Yes and my point wasn't about reading the message but about sharing it with others. If you think you're the intended recipient because the only information you have is the recipient's number, then that's one thing. If it's talking to Elon Musk in the message then it's clearly not addressed to you, so you don't have the same grounds for sharing it.

Well, legally speaking there's really no difference.

Yeah, we're not legally speaking.