Google Chrome Will Soon Warn Users About Web Pages With Unclear Mobile Billing Services (venturebeat.com)

Google is introducing a small but important update to its Chrome browser, one designed to prevent consumers from being swindled by underhanded or unclear mobile subscription services. From a report: Some web pages invite visitors to input their mobile phone number in order to subscribe to some kind of service, such as a mobile game, but it's not always clear how much they will be charged or even if that they are being charged at all. This is enabled by a service known as carrier billing, something that allows users to bypass more laborious subscription methods by having a fee charged directly to their mobile phone bill. [...] Starting from December 2018 with the launch of Chrome 71, Google's browser on mobile and desktop, as well as in Android WebView, will display a warning if it detects that there is insufficient mobile subscription information available to the user.

Comments

Re:How about ...

[squiggleslash]

With DCB, you enter your phone number, and then you get a confirmation on your phone, and are then prompted for a PIN.

Is that how you think it works? Because that's not how it works. As someone who suffered continuous fraud for several months until T-Mobile was persuaded to block these things (which it still couldn't do properly, it decided to block shortcodes too, which means I don't get text notifications from my bank when my credit card is compromised), I can tell you we never had any communication at all between us and the company stealing money from us.

And two other differences:

1. Credit card companies can and do pro-actively watch for fraud. We never saw T-Mo do the same thing.
2. T-Mobile refused to remove the charges directly, telling us we had to work with the company fraudulantly billing us.

It isn't more secure, it's stupidly insecure, and it should be banned. There's no reason whatsoever for this feature to exist, and if this country had any accountability, the execs who came up with this scheme would be in prison.

Could be worse

[Locke2005]

My ex got hit by the scam where this company sent her a text message, then because she received the message, they started billing her $9.99/month for the "service" of receiving that text message. Problem is, her account was on autopay and she never even opened her bills, so it wasn't until I looked at her bill 6 months later that she found out. Not sure why that scam wasn't illegal.