Strange Bill

chirpy007

My friend said that she had a bill pop up on her computer yesterday from a company saying that they owed £39.99 subscription to a !!!!!! site. They said she had signed up for it at the begining of May and her subs were due.

There is only her and her husband in the house, the day this is supposed to have happened they were away for the weekend.(not that they would have done it anyways)

She rang the the company on a 0871 number and they asked for her name which she refused to give and said she wasnt paying it.

I have told her to give her system a complete going over. As her husband said what sort of site would let you subscribe for a month then demand payment, what if that was a child logging on.

I told her to ring the phone company to get them to look at the number and look for details of the company.

It reeks of a scam unless im missing something obvious.

Alfonso_Skinarelli

Is the popup MBS Bill Notice?

How to remove MBS Account Manager.

albertross_2

If it is micro billing services mbs, she has an infection, and hubby may have been naughty.

superscaper

Personally I'd just remove the spyware. I don't see any point in contacting the company. To me that would be the same as trying to contact the virus writer for a virus infecting my pc. More productive in getting rid of the malicious code and putting efforts into preventing pc getting infected again.

albertross_2

I don't think the OP knew it was malware (for sure)

superscaper

albertross wrote: »

I don't think the OP knew it was malware (for sure)

Although many of the anti-malware companies consider it malware, there seems to be a lot of confusion over whether they are acting legally (if the problem is MBS). So far doesn't look like anyone has been able to definitely prove that the software can get on the pc without user acknowledgment. The MBS things seems to be getting worse and more prevalent over the last few weeks.

I guess I sometimes take for granted if I see a pop up I know nothing about then it is something to get rid of, whereas someone with less pc experience may take whatever it says seriously. I sometimes assume people will naturally infer the same thing with spam that responding or trying to unsubscribe spam will only confirm your existence and so direct contact with involved companies can sometimes be the worst thing to do.

albertross_2

What I have never understood about this type of pup, is, when they originate from democratic countries with a well developed legal system, how are they allowed to continue extorting money from people. Clicking on a link or agreement should never slow down or interfere with the operation of your PC legally, whatever the small print says. What person in their right mind would enter a contract that says we will bill you in 30/90 days, make it very difficult to get out of the contract, and if you ignore it, we will grind your PC to a halt until you pay up. Trading standards must be a bunch of wimps if they can't find a way of stopping it.

11.6 IF YOU CHOOSE TO IGNORE THE PAYMENT REMINDERS AND DO NOT PAY THE REQUIRED MEMBERSHIP FEE, YOU HEREBY UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE PROMPT REMINDERS MIGHT BECOME MORE FREQUENT AND THAT YOU MIGHT LOSE THE ABILITY TO USE YOUR COMPUTER (I.E. ACCESSING THE INTERNET, ACCESSING YOUR FILES ETC.), UNTIL YOU HAVE SUBMITTED PAYMENT OR CONTACTED CUSTOMER SERVICES. WHILE YOUR COMPUTER IS CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET THE BILLING PROCESS WILL BE ENFORCABLE

Some of the AV firms are starting to do similar things, hiding automatic renewals by CC in their license agreements, knowing nobody reads them.

http://www.leeds.gov.uk/page.aspx?egmsIdentifier=B18523652E5AE6E580256E1B003CDBB2

superscaper

I think something definitely has to be done about T&Cs and EULAs, they're getting ridiculous. And it certainly won't be clear until some of these things actually go to court whether they are enforceable or not. I mean as far as I knew a contract isn't necessarily automatically legally binding, if for example it isn't a "fair" contract even if you signed it willingly.

http://reasonableagreement.org/