Many of you may be familiar with the scam of “cramming” where unauthorized charges are added to your phone bill.  Often due to phone bills being so lengthy and confusing, people may not spot small recurring bills for services that they do not recognize and just ignore them while the scammer continues to steal the victim’s money.  Since October of 2011, customers have been permitted to block third party billing on their landlines, however, the ability to add such third party charges on your smart phone is still legal and abused by scammers who do this for illegal purposes.

TIPS

Sometimes cramming is the result of a scammer just getting the information to access your phone and add charges, but other times, people may not realize that they have given permission for such additional charges in the fine print contained on documents, such as a contest form, that they might find at a fair or other public event.  The lesson is to first, always read the fine print of anything you sign and second to read your smart phone bills carefully each month and make sure that you understand what every charge is for and dispute any charges that are bogus.