You don't always check your operator's bill from month to month. You simply pay without checking if there are any irregularities.
Detecting these problems when we have a fixed rate is easy because we know that something has happened and we have paid more than what we contracted. But it is not always easy and Premium SMS tend to sneak into our expenses without being able to block them. That is why we explain what they are, how to know if you have subscribed to a Premium SMS service or how you can unsubscribe.
If you are paying more than you should and don't know why, you may be subscribed to a Premium SMS service that causes you to be charged more every month.
What are Premium SMS?
Premium SMS are a type of paid messaging that may increase our bill from month to month without our realizing it. In some cases, we subscribe to a kind of service without having intended it and each month we are charged an amount. In others, they are messages that we send to a special rate number such as television or to download any content on the phone. There are two types, as we will explain in the next few paragraphs.
There are usually two types of messages or Premium SMS:
- Those that you request by sending an SMS to the specific number of services. Generally they will charge you for this message which usually has an extra cost. For example, you are voting for someone in a television contest to be expelled or saved. This message can be around one euro or two euros but is only charged once. It is not a subscription to any service,
- The subscriptions that we have told you about in the previous paragraph. Here is a request for registration and you periodically receive a Premium SMS service. Every time you receive an SMS, you will be charged for the message.
In the case of subscriptions, they are services to which we only subscribe by giving our mobile phone without having to accept anything else or read conditions or sign any type of contract. They charge you month by month until you cancel it. Sometimes we do not even realize that we have contracted this type of service until the invoice appears with a much higher amount than expected. Or you have paid for an SMS but you don't know that periodically they continue to charge you for the service until you are going to cancel it.
How to check it?
The first thing you should do to check if you have subscribed to a Premium SMS service is to download the invoice from your operator. As we have said, there are two types: a specific message that you have been able to send or a periodic service that you have to deactivate. In the first case, they will simply charge us for a month and then we can forget about it. If it is a subscription, we will have to look at several invoices since we will see the additional charge in each billing period.
It will depend on the company you have contracted, which will vary the process but practically all of them allow you to download the corresponding and detailed invoice through an application or the customer area of the website. Generally, all bills include a section for text messages to premium rate numbers and will have different costs depending on the phone or service. Think if you have voluntarily sent any of these messages. As we say, to download some content or to vote for someone on television, for example, to donate money to an NGO or any other type of similar publication. If this is not the case and you have premium message charges, you will have to unsubscribe or block this type of operation from the client website.
Drop out
There are two options, generally, to cancel the service:
- Through an SMS with the word BAJA to the sender of the service
- Through the operator, canceling the service
LOW by SMS
Once you have discovered that you are subscribed to this type of premium SMS and do not want to do so, you can cancel the service, although it will depend on the same whether the cancellation is possible or not. The first thing you will have to do is look for information on the Internet: it may be a scam or that you yourself have signed up by giving your details accidentally. Generally we can find how to request the cancellation and sometimes it is enough to send an ordinary SMS to a specific number with the BAJA number.
But this does not always work and especially it does not work when they are scams or frauds. Therefore, it is best to talk to your phone company telling them that you have been scammed and that you want to block these types of messages.
Contact the operator / Deactivate the option
It will depend on the company you belong to whether or not you can block messages through the customer area. Some operators allow us to access our personal data from the web or the app and here we can block this type of service together with calls to special rate numbers. The route will vary but you can search among the services that you can activate. For example, Vodafone allows you to block calls with special rates or to block SMS recipients. In Orange you can also do it from the customer area: go to the main page and log in with your data, you will see a button "activate" or "deactivate" as you wish.
But if you do not find what you are looking for on the website or in the customer area, you can contact the company by phone to disconnect these types of services. It may be very different from one operator to another, so it is best to contact us by phone to cancel the services and find out how to do it. In the case of Movistar, for example, you can call 1004 and it has a guarantee service for users that allows them to cancel the service on your behalf as long as, as they explain, “you explicitly consent to carry out such management with the holder of the numbering ”.
How to avoid it
If you have already solved this type of premium messages and you do not want it to happen to you again, there are some basic security rules that we can comply with on our WhatsApp or mobile phone and prevent this from happening to us again.
The first thing you should do is distrust the messages of raffles on WhatsApp even if you receive them from friends or acquaintances. They are usually spam chains that ask for your personal information and your mobile phone and that subscribe you to this type of premium messages to steal money from you every month. Like sweepstakes on WhatsApp that you receive from your contacts, it also usually happens through a message that tells you that you have won a sweepstakes and that you have to click on the link to get the prize. Congratulations, promotions or any other type of message that you did not expect to receive and have received. All of them can be dangerous. Avoid opening links that you do not know and do not trust even if they are sent to you by message.
Another of the simplest tips that we can follow to not subscribe to premium SMS is not to give our mobile phone in applications that do not seem reliable to us. Do not fill in logs of apps that promise to spy on your contacts or anything similar, or in games that you have downloaded from app stores of doubtful reliability. Check well where you are going to give your phone.
Date update on 2020-11-16. Date published on 2020-11-16. Category: Computer class Author: Oscar olg Fuente: adslzone