There has been some talk in my office about a fraudulent SMS charge scam on peoples AT&T bills over the last couple of months. There were 3 people in my office who got hit with this scam. I finally got around to examining our bill closer and found out that my wife’s phone had been hit by the same scam (For two months! Yes, shame on me for not looking closer at my bill and noticing this.).
The text message that came to my wife’s phone said this:
IQ Power: Welcome to Trivia Alerts! 3xmsgs/wk Monthly charge billed @ 9.99/mo. Reply HELP or call 8888906150 for help, STOP to cancel Msg&Data Rates May Apply
She Ignored it. Who wouldn’t? I have told a million people to ignore scam messages like this. Apparently with SMS text messaging though if you send unsolicited text messages to people saying that you are going to charge them $10 a month and they don’t respond you are allowed to do it?
This is what the charges on my bill looked like:
I had to contact AT&T (super fun) who said they would refunded the funds to my account and applied a purchase blocker to my account to prevent this in the future. Which is a start but it shouldn’t be allowed in the first place.
Yes I will be looking at my bills closer in the future.
