Short Codes Scam
You get your cell phone bill and suprise there is a bunch of mysterious charges for “short codes”. You
have no idea what they are and after you contact your cell phone carrier they tell you that you subscribed
to a third party billing services that you never heard of.
What happened? Short codes are are 5-6 digit
phone numbers where you txt them a code to receive a services such as a joke of the day. You will often
see short codes being used on tv shows like American Idol where you vote by sending a txt message and are billed fifty cents to participate.
The problem is that short code services are spamming cellular phone users with useless services and hitting them up with huge fees without the customer authorizing the charge. Sometimes the service is promoted as being free, such as with twitter, facebook or with ringtones. Then the bill comes and you find out you have been charged for the so called “free’ service.
Teenagers are often the target market for short codes ad they are the biggest users of text messaging. When the bill comes in the parents pay the bill without even knowing what the short code bills are for.
Recently a class action lawsuit was launched and the publisher Simon & Schuster could end up paying out up to $90 million dollars for spamming cellular users with short codes.
