I just spent an hour online with ATT "customer service" and wanted to warn ATT customers that they could be subject to fraudulent data charges through their texting plans. It's pretty scary stuff; sorry for the windy posting, but here's the cautionary tale of what happened:

I was looking at my phone bill and noticed higher than usual charges. I called ATT. They said that some text messager named "MBLOVE2" sent a text to my wife's phone line. Now, bear in mind that we don't use text messaging for anything, in general. The message that they had sent to my wife said "respond to this message with 'STOP' to discontinue receiving messages like this." This my wife did. However, we were charged $9.99 twice on our bill for this "subscription" service that neither of us had ever heard of before.

Back to ATT help desk. They said we must have subscribed to the service somehow. We didn't. They said that there's nothing they can do to prevent people from sending texts that charge us unless we use something called "Purchase Blocker." What is purchase blocker? I'd never heard of it. Turns out that it's an ATT service that prevents unauthorized purchases from occurring, such as the one I'd been charged for by MBLOVE2. Why didn't ATT make this the "default" when one starts service, and enable people to decide what should or should not be charged to their accounts? The help desk person (and her two supervisors) had no explanation about why ATT didn't make this the default for service, but I digress.

I then asked the help desk person to look into my account over the past year, and it turns out that there were $60 in additional charges from a company called "Motricity" (www.motricity.com) that I was unaware of to my wife's account over the past several months. I insisted that they all be rescinded/credited, which they will be. A number of thoughts:

1) ATT is taking no responsibility for this. They say there's nothing they can do about it, and that it's basically up the customer to determine if fraudulent charges have been made to the account. The first manager I spoke with even acknowledged that he'd heard of MBLOVE2 before and that it was a problem for others! I asked why they haven't done anything about it; he had no answer other than it was up to me to deal with it, basically, even though ATT is the one billing us. They're the ones charging us on behalf of a 3rd party that we never heard of, but are putting the onus of preventing fraudulent charges on the customers. They say that these charges can "happen" only if one approves them via text. That's not true. They "happen" if you simply get the text. One of the companies that fraudulently billed us is known as "motricity" (www.motricity.com). They sent text messages to my wife with "no subject" --completely blank. She thought it was strange, but ignored it and did nothing. Still, we were billed $19.99 for them. I called them; no answer, but sent an email through their website explaining what happened, and that I'm going to report their practices to the authorities. We'll see what happens (apparently they're a publicly traded company: MOTR)

2) What frightens me the most? The fact that I (as a fairly tech savvy sort) got bilked on my bill, but if it's happening to me, it's happening to tens or hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting folks, like my parents, grandparents, and others who aren't so tech savvy. Telecom bills are notoriously complicated and confusing. This leads to point #3.

3) What these bad guys are counting on is that the phone/data/service bills are sooooo incredibly dense and convoluted. I just did a word count on my last month's bill. Total number of words: 34, 189! People get "glaze over" when they read their bills, and don't understand all the components. It's hard to understand what's in them. For example, I just did a word search for "motricity" in the bill, and nothing. It's not in there. Why? Because it's buried in the data charges and will only show up on my credit card statement. --And that's what the criminals are hoping for (with somewhat witting compliance by AT&T).

4) In that regard, ATT puts the onus of "security of their customer's credit card accounts" into the hands of companies like Motricity. Instead of preventing fraud by empowering their customers (with knowledge of these things or blocking them altogether, or informing customers about "Purchase Blocker" at the beginning of data service), they put the onus of finding fraud and "addressing" it with the customers.

5) This is essentially "text spam, " but ATT is ignoring it as a customer nuisance. They don't see it as a serious case of fraud perpetrated on their customers. As to why they don't explain/warn customers about this up front? I'm guessing it's because they're concerned that customers would choose "purchase blocker" up front, and not buy a lot of the legitimate purchases of ringtones, songs, and other things that people buy (to ATT's profit) through their phones. But their clearly ignoring spam as fraud by enabling companies to access your data text account, regardless of your approval, then "dealing with it" after customers discover the problem and call to complain.

Bottom line: ATT has probably done the math: the money they make through purchases (fraudulent and legitimate) must far outweigh the risks/problems of dealing with customers who call to complain about companies and individuals who steal from their customers just because they have access to a) our phone numbers and b) a text application that automatically submits an invoice to ATT's billings systems for said phone number.

If you're an ATT data customer, I'd check your bill immediately and/or call their help desk and ask them to see if any "subscription" services have been added. They can easily go back a year to review your bills. At the end of my conversation with a top customer service manager at ATT, he finally acknowledged that yes, this is a problem, and that they should probably warn people about this, at a minimum.

Finally, please let others know about this (members of congress, family, friends, etc.). If this happened to me, it's happening a LOT more people out there. Personally, I'm contacting all of the above.

Sorry for the lengthy message, but I wanted to warn others. This shouldn't be legal...

PS. I tried to look up MBLOVE2, but they don't seem to "exist" as any real company.