I learned this the hard way this week, and wanted you all to be aware of a particular scam on Facebook. After scrutinizing our mobile bill this week, we found a few charges that made no sense. We called Verizon to chat about it and found out something interesting.
Apparently, there are certain quizzes (and probably other things) on Facebook that will automatically sign you up for “SMS text news” services that charge a monthly fee. They can do this when you have your mobile phone setup to receive SMS texts from Facebook. Once we knew what was happening, I was able to unsub from the service simply by replying to the text with the word “stop”.
But, its a bit unnerving that there are folks out there that do this purposely and write apps that will scam you like this. The lesson here is to be very careful which applications you allow to interact with your Facebook profile. Each application is supposed to include small print, particularly if it signs you up for a paid service, however, some don’t follow good Internet-citizen guidelines. Just like anything, you have to watch out for yourself.
You can also check with your cell provider. Verizon has the ability to block these types of things happening, so yours may, too.