The problems he encountered with his phone getting prank called had nothing to do with the 118 800 directory - it was due to a friend losing his cell phone.

I did some probing and this appears to be purely a UK problem, although I sympathize. I know there were proposals to make mobile numbers public in the US, but I think they were shot down. I occasionally get spam text messages, but they were all from the telco.

Why would anyone want to call Dave Gorman, anyhow?

Not wishing to defend 118 800, but after the first prank call from that service he could go "ex-directory" and get no further calls.

However, he's spot on when he points out that when you signed up for your mobile, there were no questions about being listed in a directory nor any expectation of such a listing.

Exactly. The point of this is not one celeb who's number inadvertantly became public domain, it's the rest of us poor sods who are forced to use our unique contact information like phone numbers and mailing addresses to get regular services, and then watch that information get bought and sold until it ends up in the hands of scumbags, at which point the junk mail, automated phone calls and spam texts become a denial of service attack which is very hard to guard against.

>> "Not wishing to defend 118 800, but after the first prank call from that service he could go "ex-directory" and get no further calls."

Yeah that doesn't scale too well. What about when there's hundreds of such services? It should either be strictly opt-in, or failing that have a centralized shared opt-out system.

Anyone know of a GSM cell phone that can be configured to ring only when the incoming call is from a number in the phone's address book?

'Twould have eliminated the need for the OP (Dave Gorman) to change his phone number

Not necessarily - there's still voicemail to consider.