fuziwuzi
Not born yesterday
Premium
join:2005-07-01
Atlanta, GA
| reply to taar
Re: death to spammers!
said by taar  :said by fuziwuzi :They should also do something about the spam txts that automatically deduct minutes off of pay-as-you-go plans. My Mom, who is definitely not a technically inclined woman, was distraught to learn that simply by reading the txt messages she was getting she was having all her minutes she'd purchased used up. One message alone deducted 100 minutes. I told her to simply not read ANY txt messages, nobody she knows is txt'ing her so just ignore them. I set her phone to not alert her to incoming messages. So spammers have made what could be a useful system (txt'ing) into something that must be ignored. I dont think it matters if you read them or not. Once it is delivered to your phone, you are charged. No, at least on my Mom's the minutes are deducted only when you open the message. I've looked at these messages, the charge isn't from the carrier but somehow these spammers are generating messages that when opened transfer minutes from the recipients account to the spammer's account. I don't know how it works but I called the carrier (Trackfone) and they said there was nothing they could do about it. For instance, one message I looked at, as soon as I clicked the "Read" button, 20 minutes were deducted from my Mom's account. These are not standard text messages, obviously... they've figured out how to swindle minutes (which turns into money) from unsuspecting users. |
