As per reports of the UIDAI’s now-decommissioned toll-free number suddenly started appearing in users’ phonebooks even on those devices with no Internet connection yet and even some with no SIM card inserted in them, when checking a number of smartphone units  present in possession. We set up a Huawei P20 Pro which had previously been reset to its earlier factory condition, and now found that the UIDAI toll-free number as well as a “Distress Number” entry, under which the national emergency hotline 112, had also been saved.

They then set up a Huawei Nova 3 smartphone and noted that the numbers were not saved, but they popped up a moment later in few minutes. This unit also had no SIM card inserted in it and we didn’t allow the phone to connect to any Wi-Fi during the setup process. Interestingly, after that we repeated the factory reset process on both phones available with us and found that while the two numbers did not pop up in the P20 Pro’s phonebook for the second time, they did the third time even. They were also ready and waiting for us on the Nova 3 smartphone.

The third unit we started checking was a OnePlus 6, which had been lying idle with a Wi-Fi connection available and had not freshly reformatted. Both numbers were there in the address book. Post a reformat, they were still availabe there. The same was true when we went through the setup process on a OnePlus 5T (Review) that had previously been already factory reset.

We did not find either number on our Asus ZenFone 5Z available with us, Samsung Galaxy J8, or Infinix Hot 6 Pro units we tested for not less than 15 minutes after setting them all up. The next phone we grabbed was a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5, and both numbers were present there after a fresh initialisation.

In all those cases, we went through the setup process with Wi-Fi disabled already and no SIM cards inserted at all. We left all settings as their defaults and avoided all optional steps. We did not even sign in with a Google account or provide any form of personal identification.

We’ve contacted OnePlus, Huawei, Xiaomi, and other OEMs for comments in this regard and will update this story as and when we hear back from them.

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