Money taken from O2 account by Microsoft - Fraud

foogirl

Indeed, it looks like that was coincidental and its made her suspicious.

But weird the phone did that when nobody was touching it.

bris

They are 11 you will never get the true story.


The thing I can't understand however is why you would set up an account that would let an 11 year old have access to a service that allows £450 to be spent without your knowledge.

neilmcl

foogirl wrote: »

Indeed, it looks like that was coincidental and its made her suspicious.

But weird the phone did that when nobody was touching it.

So who's paying up - your friend or the mum of this other boy?

neilmcl

bris wrote: »

They are 11 you will never get the true story.


The thing I can't understand however is why you would set up an account that would let an 11 year old have access to a service that allows £450 to be spent without your knowledge.

Some parents just don't have a clue or unaware of setting up parental controls on gaming devices and phones.

foogirl

Thing is, and this is something to take note of, this was not due to a lack of parental control. All O2 accounts have this service on it. All EE accounts have it too. They don't tell you it's there, and if you want to opt out, you have to call the mobile provider. I know my stuff when it comes to parental controls and have all our own accounts and phones locked down tight. This still could have happened to us. My husband works in IT, he's never heard of this service on our accounts either, nor the service that was used to pay for this stuff.

This wasn't my friend's son ordering stuff willy nilly. This was my friend's son being taken advantage of by his so called mate. He didn't buy a bunch of stuff through apps on his phone, she doesn't have any payment cards linked to the phone and he can't buy anything on his iTunes account etc. This was theft.

Tothepoint.

foogirl wrote: »

Thing is, and this is something to take note of, this was not due to a lack of parental control. All O2 accounts have this service on it. All EE accounts have it too. They don't tell you it's there, and if you want to opt out, you have to call the mobile provider. I know my stuff when it comes to parental controls and have all our own accounts and phones locked down tight. This still could have happened to us. My husband works in IT, he's never heard of this service on our accounts either, nor the service that was used to pay for this stuff.

This wasn't my friend's son ordering stuff willy nilly. This was my friend's son being taken advantage of by his so called mate. He didn't buy a bunch of stuff through apps on his phone, she doesn't have any payment cards linked to the phone and he can't buy anything on his iTunes account etc. This was theft.

Best get it reported to the police and get a crime number then.

foogirl

neilmcl wrote: »

So who's paying up - your friend or the mum of this other boy?

She's going round to speak to the parents tonight. Hopefully they will agree to pay but she isn't holding out any hope. Another option will be to contact Microsoft and ask them to refund. I believe they can remove the downloads.

foogirl

Tothepoint. wrote: »

Best get it reported to the police and get a crime number then.

She will be doing that too.

unholyangel

foogirl wrote: »

Thing is, and this is something to take note of, this was not due to a lack of parental control. All O2 accounts have this service on it. All EE accounts have it too. They don't tell you it's there, and if you want to opt out, you have to call the mobile provider. I know my stuff when it comes to parental controls and have all our own accounts and phones locked down tight. This still could have happened to us. My husband works in IT, he's never heard of this service on our accounts either, nor the service that was used to pay for this stuff.

This wasn't my friend's son ordering stuff willy nilly. This was my friend's son being taken advantage of by his so called mate. He didn't buy a bunch of stuff through apps on his phone, she doesn't have any payment cards linked to the phone and he can't buy anything on his iTunes account etc. This was theft.

Unless I'm mistaken, the son had a contract phone. Or more accurately, the parents took out a contract in one of their names and gave it to the son to use (effectively bypassing the safeguards in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening to children). That is entirely within parental control. Dont mean to sound harsh but its always someone elses fault.

Using your phone to pay for services is not new, its been around for a very long time - possibly even longer than PAYG phones have been in existence. With payg, they would only let you process payments with the available credit you had. With monthly contracts, well it can lead to some huge £400+ bills depending on what your credit limit is.

foogirl

unholyangel wrote: »

Unless I'm mistaken, the son had a contract phone. Or more accurately, the parents took out a contract in one of their names and gave it to the son to use (effectively bypassing the safeguards in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening to children). That is entirely within parental control. Dont mean to sound harsh but its always someone elses fault.

Using your phone to pay for services is not new, its been around for a very long time - possibly even longer than PAYG phones have been in existence. With payg, they would only let you process payments with the available credit you had. With monthly contracts, well it can lead to some huge £400+ bills depending on what your credit limit is.

But taking out a contract for children is entirely normal. Thousands of parents do it. To be sure you are safeguarding, you have to be fully informed of all the facts. My point is, even the savviest of folks might not realise this particular thing was possible. She accepts her son did the wrong thing, but he did not do it with the intention of letting his friend buy all those games. Not all 11 year old boys are feral brats who scam their parents. He's in trouble for sure tonight, but naivety is not uncommon for young children. And horrible that at 11 he has to learn his friends cannot be trusted.

I've had a mobile phone for 20 years. Until very recently, the only things you could charge to your account were supplier related items. Indeed on their website, O2 call it "a new way to pay for digital content" so this particular service has not been around for a very long time. EE launched it two years ago. I went back and looked over all the stuff we signed up to with EE three years ago and this was not mentioned. Neither have we been advised since then that this facility is on our account. I called them today and they claimed we could not turn it off. So, if we were to want to add a child's phone to our shared plan, we could not stop them doing this.

It also occurs to me that it would be very easy for someone to take advantage of an elderly or vulnerable relative with this.

Sure, it's always someone else's fault, but sometimes it actually is. Could she really have foreseen that one of her son's friend's would do something like this?