Premium numbers used by organizations in earning revenue from mobile phone users are becoming an increasing phenomenon. More businesses are advertising shortened mobile numbers, to where users may send an SMS in order to subscribe to services or ask questions. SMS’s sent to these numbers are charged at higher rates than your normal SMS’s that are being sent by mobile phone users. Many organizations are also making use of the premium number facility in obtaining donations from mobile phone users. SMS’s sent to these numbers are often charged at very high amounts.

Not only did legitimate business institution realise the potential of this income generation facility, but fraudsters have also realised the potential of the premium number service as yet another source of generating more ill-gotten gains.

How the Scam Works

Fraudsters register for membership to a premium number facility. Relatively small amounts are required to launch this service and many institutions offer this service free to qualifying users, sharing only in their profits.

Once successfully registered, fraudsters obtain lists of active mobile phone numbers from the Internet. Often specialized software is used to crawl websites, identify and collect mobile phone numbers. In many instances offenders may obtain lists of mobile phone numbers from existing companies, using friends or family members to illegally gather this information from company systems.

Once obtained, offenders will create an SMS falsely indicating to mobile phone users that they have been registered as users of the system and that a certain amount of money will be deducted from their mobile phone accounts on a daily or weekly basis. The user is also informed that he/she may cancel the subscription by sending an SMS to the premium number.

The majority of mobile phone users will then send an SMS to the number in order to cancel the subscription. What the victim does not realize is that he/she will, by sending the SMS, subscribe themselves to the service and funds will then start being deducted from their accounts.

It has been found that a number of fraudsters are working, along with the service providers, to automatically mass subscribe a number of mobile numbers on their systems. Here no SMS’s are sent and money will be deducted from the subscribed mobile phone numbers automatically.

Protecting Yourself

Always be alert when you receive SMS’s. Make sure that you carefully read every SMS received. If you do receive a notification that you had been subscribed to a service, when in fact you never subscribed, simply delete the SMS without replying to it.

If funds are being deducted from your mobile phone account for a service you have not subscribed for, immediately contact your service provider and launch a formal complaint for the funds illegally deducted.

In many countries around the world you will find specific organizations dealing with consumer scam related issues. Be sure to identify any such organization in your country and report the incident without any delays.

By: Kaung | KMKBlog.com