Its so easy to cheat !

Question : Can you be billed by anybody on your phone account without even you knowing about it?

If your answer is no,I must tell you that you are in for a big surprise!

All that any XYZ supposedly registered company needs, is an email ID and a phone number. They can simply say that they have provided some dumb service to your phone(It could be a personal voicemail service ,long distance call facility or something else). They can then send a bill to your parent phone company (i.e companies like AT&T or Verizon etc. with whom you have a contract) and include this extra cost along with their bill cost.So, when you get your next bill, you see some extra cost for something that you haven't even heard of !!

Those who are here might have understood what I'm trying to say . But others who are new or in a different part of the world might not understand what I'm trying to say!

Let me explain what happened to me.

I am looking online for colleges or universities which can provide online certification programs that are GOOD and REASONABLY PRICED.I used to give a random search and fill up forms where I had to give them my email ID and phone number so that they can follow up with my request.

My hubby had already warned me NOT to do anything that had to do with giving away credit card numbers or SSN or any private data.But phone numbers were apparently OK(atleast that's what I thought).

To be fair, I did get several calls from various universities about the various courses that they were offering.

However,we got our telephone bill yesterday and we saw an extra charge of nearly 50 dollars for some service we hadn't even subscribed for ! The description said that it was for something called as ILD services and had two 1-800 numbers.

I then called our Cingular customer service guys and asked them what this extra charge was for . They told me that some third party had billed this charge on the phone number and that I had to call them to find out why they had charged us this amount.

I called the 1-800 numbers . One person said that I had filled a form online to provide a personal voicemail box and that they were billing me for that service.
The second person said that they were charging us for long distance call facility!

Apparently, I had filled some online form with my email id and phone number and asked for this service.They also said that they had sent mails to the email ID provided about how much they would be charging for these services. Since the mail did not bounce nor did they get a reply asking for removal of the service, they simply went ahead and charged us for it.

Needless to say, that I was not even aware of this ! This was something really unthinkable for me.

I then asked them to reverse these charges since we did not really subscribe for them. Both the companies have promised me that they will reverse the bill in 1 or 2 billing cycles.

Cingular customer support guys have also been good enough to wait for the next 1 or 2 billing cycles for this third party charge to be reversed.

I sincerely hope that these two companies do what they have promised to do !

Later, I learnt that all a person needs is a valid email ID and a phone number to start charging that number for imaginary services!

Lessons from this spooky experience.

1. NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBERS.
2. NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR SSN NUMBER.
3. NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR PHONE NUMBER.
4. NEVER GIVE OUT ANY OTHER PERSONAL DETAILS.

If you absolutely need to give your personal details, make sure that they are to people who are authorised to see them. Even then, make sure that they donot write it down anywhere.

Even in restaurants, it is best to pay by cash or a prepaid hotel card instead of a credit card ! It seems that there have been several instances of identity theft that have happened in this way.

Its always better to be careful than sorry !