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imctu343 October 15th 11 04:39 AM

Mysterious charges ashore your telegraph bill
 
Stealing the identity of a legitimate company is the latest distort in a techno-racket that's bedeviled cellphone users beautiful many since the invention of the txt message. Suddenly texts begin spilling into your phone, emulated at recurring charges on your bill for a service you not mandated.
The problem is: It's all also effortless for these fly-by-night texters to pass along charges through legitimate phone companies like AT&T and Verizon. Stronger protections because wireless clients are apparently needed. More above namely in a little while.
First, Bob Carter is typical of numerous wireless customers who have gotten caught in this pitfall. Carter, 55, goes as manager of human resources for the Huntington Library in San Marino.
He recently placarded some unusual texts arriving on his AT&TiPhone. The 1st said he had an unread message from a "mysterious trample." Carter ignored it.
Then he received a couple of texts from someone called Guessology.com attempting current ring tones. Next came a text asking whether Justin Bieber will soon be forming a chap band.
"That's while I eventually texted them to stop," Carter said.
I know: I'm as startled as you are that a senior lawful by the classic Huntington Library is uninterested in Bieber's boy-band longings. Be that as it may, Carter thought he was done with the problem.
Nope.
Checking his most recent AT&T bill, Carter saw he was creature billed $9.99 from AVL Marketing for "mobile health alerts."
"I didn't sign up for this alternatively anything another," he said. "I merely use text messages to linger in touch with my family."
Carter called AT&T. A service rep, he said, swiftly admitted to repeal the charges, not answers queried. That was good.
"But then he spun right into a hard-sell pitch for AT&T's U-verse services," Carter said. "It was peculiar. It made me surprise whether AT&T and these texting companies were in on this together."
The respond to that is no. But phone companies usually impose charges from third parties until a customer heaves a stink.
"We have millions and millions of third-party transactions every hour and every daytime," said Lane Kasselman, an AT&T negotiator. "Most of them are legitimate."
Here's how it works: Third-party businesses seek the services of medium men understood as aggregators. These aggregators in rotate pass by charges to phone companies, which location them on people's bills without first checking their authenticity. (The carriers mention they don't obtain a mow of these charges.)


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