Test Email Addresses and Fictional Phone Numbers

E-mail domains reserved for testing

Using a real-looking address such as test@gmail.com in fixtures is a classic mistake: the address may belong to someone, and the first time a staging server sends a password reset or newsletter, a stranger receives it. The internet standards reserve a handful of names that can never be registered by anyone, so mail to them can never reach a person:

Sources: RFC 2606 – Reserved Top Level DNS Names and RFC 6761 – Special-Use Domain Names. Our test data generator and address generator only create e-mail addresses on these domains.

E-mail addresses for validation tests

All on reserved domains, so they are safe to submit anywhere. “Valid” refers to the address syntax in RFC 5321/5322; many real-world validators are stricter.

Phone numbers reserved for fiction

Films and TV shows need phone numbers that nobody owns, and so do test fixtures, demos and documentation. A handful of regulators publish such ranges. Numbers in them are format-valid — they pass libphonenumber-style checks for length and prefix — but they are not assigned to subscribers, so a test SMS or call reaches no one. Where a country has no published range, it is safer to leave the phone field empty than to invent a number that might ring a real person.

United States — NANPA (North American Numbering Plan Administrator)

Only 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved as fictitious, non-working numbers. The rest of the 555 exchange can be assigned to real lines (555-1212 is directory assistance). Source: NANPA – 555 line numbers.

Canada — NANPA (shared North American Numbering Plan)

Canada is part of the North American Numbering Plan, so the same 555-0100 to 555-0199 block applies. Source: NANPA – 555 line numbers.

United Kingdom — Ofcom

Ofcom recommends these 1,000-number blocks for drama and says they will not be allocated to providers in the foreseeable future. For any other area code it suggests the 01632 block. Source: Ofcom – Telephone numbers for use in TV and radio drama programmes.

Australia — ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority)

Geographic blocks accept any last four digits. Mobile, freephone and local-rate numbers are individual numbers, not ranges. Source: ACMA – Phone numbers for use in TV shows, films and creative works.

France — Arcep

Arcep reserves six blocks of 10,000 numbers for audiovisual works; they can neither make nor receive calls. Source: Arcep – Plan national de numérotation (numéros pour œuvres audiovisuelles).

Germany — Bundesnetzagentur

The Bundesnetzagentur provides 1,000 landline numbers in five cities and mobile operators added two blocks of 100 plus ten individual numbers (not used here). Source: Bundesnetzagentur – Mitteilung 148/2021, Rufnummern für Medienproduktionen.

All ranges checked against the regulators’ own pages in October 2026. Regulators can change them; check the source before printing a number in a broadcast.

Tips for test contact data

• Store phones in E.164 (+442079460754) and format them for display only. Fictional numbers make good fixtures because they still parse correctly.
• Block real delivery in non-production environments. Reserved domains protect you when the data is fictional; a mail catcher such as Mailpit or MailHog protects you when it is not.
• Make test records easy to find. A query like email LIKE '%@example.%' or a phone prefix of 555-01 lets you exclude test users from metrics and delete them later.
• Don’t use 555-1212 or random 555 numbers. In North America only 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved; other 555 numbers can be assigned.