[LINK] mobile phone spam

[Fred Pilcher]

Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> If my reading of (a) the Australian situation (that you pay to send SMS 
> not to receive them), (b) the regulations and (c) general scam 
> literature suggests that the scam works like this:
> Scammer >> spam SMS to customer: "Reply for free ringtones! (etc)"*
> Customer >> hits reply, gets free ringtone*
> Scammer treats reply as "Yes I want to subscribe to your free 
> ringtones*" (See our Web page for terms, conditions, and prices)
> Scammer sends premium SMSs to subscribers and charges.

That was my assumption too, but no, it doesn't work like that. It 
doesn't require any action on the receiver's part. Once you've received 
the message, whether you open it or not, the money starts disappearing 
from your account.

The only way to stop it is to text STOP, in caps, as a reply.

I can't believe this is legal - it's just too ludicrous to comtemplate. 
Surely it's a misconfiguration at some point by the provider?

Fred