Student's Mobile Mayhem After Paris Match

Shira Barlow is not a celebrity socialite who has recently been released from prison. Nor is she a friend of Hollywood stars or the heiress to a hotel empire.

But ever since the UCLA student was assigned Paris Hilton's old mobile telephone number in February, she has been getting a lot more invitations to parties.

There were also plenty of calls and texts of solidarity around the time Hilton went to prison for violating the terms of her probation for driving offenses. Ms Barlow, from San Francisco, said: "People were scared for her."

She said one text read: "It's disgusting how they treated you in there, but once again you have showed the world that you can do anything."

Ms Barlow was given a new number after losing her mobile when it fell into a toilet during a night out.

She said she "didn't make the connection" at first when she got a string of texts and calls from people she did not know, many of them between 2am and 4am on Saturday nights.

As it turned out, she had been given a recycled phone number that had previously belonged to Hilton. The practice stems from efforts by regulators, earlier in the decade, to conserve phone numbers in order to minimize the splitting of area codes.

The Los Angeles Times said it discovered Ms Barlow's story when a reporter dialed a number that several sources had said was Hilton's mobile.

Another time, Ms Barlow had a long conversation with an aspiring rap artist who, after learning he was not talking to Hilton, still invited her to a party.

She said she had decided to keep the number because it has been a greater source of amusement than problems. "It was really out of convenience," she added. "I didn't want to switch again."

It is probably for the best that Hilton's recycled number did not go to news anchor Mika Brzezinski

Calls to Paris

"Baby girl, how are you?" one man purred in a foreign accent.

"Why are you doing this?" a woman asked. "This is so rude."

One woman caller did not take too kindly to being told she was not speaking to Hilton. "I'm so insulted. You must be on drugs," the woman said.

Just after Ms Barlow got her new phone, a flurry of calls and text messages came within days of Hilton's birthday on February 17. "Oh my God," one caller said. "Where's the party?"