What’s Happening
In short, the scam is that crooks send you a text message that says whatever but costs $9.95 or so, per message. How they get your cell phone text message address varies, but they will try a transmission. If you don’t catch it, then the next month they’ll start doing more messages. For each message, your carrier charges the $9.95.
It looks like the bill at the top of the page. Note the "Premium Messaging" line.
This is a very high priced scam. In the above bill, two messages were sent; you can see the cost.
They’ll try to keep it down, so that the costs don’t jump out at you, but they will do what they can to get as much money as they can before it is discovered.
What to Do
The main thing is to carefully examine each bill. Look at the Usage Charges section. If you see this, call your wireless company immediately or sooner. Give them the information about the messages. The operator should be able to give you instructions on how to stop the messages. It involves sending a message back to the crooked company with the word “Stop” in the text area. Do this for each message, because different companies, or the same company with a different text message address is doing it and you have to run a “Stop” for each text message address.
Ask the operator to put a “lock” on your cell phone txt capability. I know it might hurt to not get text messages, but the lock should just be for the premium messages.
I should also warn you that regular text messages can be “spam” as well. So look through every one of your text messages. If it is spam, call your cell phone company.
