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

Dang!

[cascadingstylesheet]

I'm all for security, but this is getting almost comically fine grained.

Question

[Locke2005]

Why don't the carriers give me the option of disabling Direct Carrier Billing for my account? In fact, why don't they give me the option of disabling equipment purchase plans? More than once people have order hardware billed to my phone number! (No, I didn't have to actually pay for it, but it took a lot of work on my behalf to fix it.)