Spam Texts costing £1.50 (merged threads)

GeoThermal

My son is getting texts to his mobile that cost him £1.50 a time. It started when he replied to the first one offering a free ringtone.

They appear to be PUSH messages. He gets an alert to say he's received it but there is nothing in the PUSH inbox or standard text inbox so finding out where they are coming from is tricky. I haven't been able to check myself as he is away for the weekend.

Any ideas on how to stop them?

Browntoa

the only way of stopping these is to txt STOP to the 88 number

ie.. STOP 88281

gizmoleeds

These scam texts are absurd. There is no reason for them to exist - why should anyone have to pay to receive messages - it is not like you have a choice. And with PAYG you can't withhold payment and force your operator to sort it out because the money is already gone. Perhaps this could be the next MSE campaign once "debt- not in front of the kids" is sorted. I know my MP and may mention these next time I see him. The mirror likes campaigns like this too. They should be outlawed.

If everone affected by these scams wrote to their MPs it would soon get sorted, as there's no reason for any MP to say "no, actually I agree with scam texts".

Midas

gizmoleeds wrote:

These scam texts are absurd. There is no reason for them to exist - why should anyone have to pay to receive messages - it is not like you have a choice. And with PAYG you can't withhold payment and force your operator to sort it out because the money is already gone. Perhaps this could be the next MSE campaign once "debt- not in front of the kids is sorted". I know my MP and may mention these next time I see him. The mirror likes campaigns like this too. They should be outlawed.

I would tend to agree - such things add little to society and are basically a nuisance. The counter argument would be that you do have a choice though - by replying to the original spam message you were 'agreeing' to receive further messages until you cancel, although obviously in this case the OP's son didn't realise this.

There is a simple lesson here - never reply to spam texts, ever!

Browntoa

banned in Norway....but for some reason the Networks cannot do it here for "Technical Reasons"

maybe it's because a new law was brought in banning them, rather than leave it to them to police themselves

gizmoleeds

There's no reason for any company needing them. Even the so-called "legitmate" users - ringtone "clubs" are just mini scams in themselves. Their adverts are targetted at children who hear "get crazy frog, text frog to 81234 - ringtones £1.50" and think (quite reasonably) that they are paying £1.50 for a ringtone, without realising they will be sent more and more every month and be charged for the privelige, until they figure out how to stop them (which may require a premium rate text itself).

Edinburghlass_2

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=80710

GeoThermal

Thanks for the replies. Looks like I will just have to use a new sim card. Trouble is my son has deleted the messages so there is no way to know the number they are coming from and now his credit is down to under £1 they have stopped coming. I don't want to risk another £10 topup so probably best just to put a new sim in.

My son thinks the original one came from a company called Coolmob and I can only find one reference to them on Google so have emailed them to ask what their procedure is to remove his number from their service and have also emailed O2 to see if they can trace the number the texts are coming from. Failing that I'll just chuck the sim.

GeoThermal

Had to laugh.

O2 replied saying that due to the Data Protection Act they can only deal with my son.

pennymakespounds

all i have is a text number 61188 ..... can i find out who it is ?

ManAtHome

They normally start with 8... It's not this is it? http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:GNX2yI9zg4cJ:ringtones.camelnetwork.com/order/8/8/61188+uk+text+61188&hl=en