getting text messages from adult sites!

March2012

much appreciated. i imagine the others on this thread were joking...

Martin50 wrote: »

Maybe, but I got unwanted popups from adult sites and these started to appear while I was checking train times: as far as I can tell I'd inadvertently tapped on an ad on a website and the ad had been compromised in some way. Vodafone did, at my request, block adult content on the web with the result instead of a pornographic site my phone started to load photos which, at first sight, looked like something advertising the spa in a moderately upmarket hotel...

In any case I did find myself signed up for a paid-for service that I knew nothing about (I've related the story in another thread here). Presumably part of the principle, exploited by the scammers who set these things up, is that if your phone starts displaying adult content while you're in a public place you'll just close the window and not look too closely at whether you are signing up for anything in the process. The adult pop-up that appeared on my phone did have a couple of tick-boxes saying 'do you want to download the videos' and there seemed to be no way of unticking the boxes.

Your network should be able to block any premium texts and extra paid-for services. This is clearly stipulated in the code of practice for premium services which the networks have signed up for. In my case I needed to get past various clueless people in customer services and in a Vodafone store before finding anybody who was able to put this into action. As others have said, this will also prevent you from using this approach for payment legitimately, but frankly if a payment system is so insecure that accidentally tapping on your phone could land you with a bill of £4.50 per week with no attempt being made to verify that you have authorised the payment then you are probably better off not using it.