Internet Scam Using iPhone Ad
The other day, I was using an iPhone app, and I saw an ad that says “You have one logo” in German(I live in Germany). I clicked it, and I was not interested, so I closed it. But, then, I got an SMS with a link to their website. I thought it was weird that they could send me an SMS, which means they knew my phone number.
Since then, I checked the online billing system of T-Mobile Germany, and it showed that I was charged 4.99 euros twice, once per week. Then I remembered that the ad said the logo cost 5 euro per week. I was so upset, that I contacted T-mobile, reporting the abuse. They said they blocked my account from being charged by outside service, but it seems I still have to pay the 10 euro.
It’s quite crazy that mobile networks allow this kind of scam to defraud people. If I didn’t check the online billing, I could have paid 20 euro extra each months. I could have lost several hundreds euro eventually.
But it’s easy to understand why this kind of scam is hard to uproot. Mobile companies make money from the commission(when an outside company provides service and charge the user, the mobile company gets commission), and apps developers gets a lot of money(I’m sure those people who run this scam are willing to pay more than 10 euro per click to developers, which is 10 times higher than what adsense or iAd would pay). But, scams like this will eventually kill the whole mobile ads market. I mean, who will ever touch an ad when they know it might cost them several hundreds of euro?
So, I plead the mobile networks to make sure the outside services should be able to charge people only they are actually providing valuable service(and reject them as soon as several users report their scam), and if you are a developer, consider use only respected ad systems like adsense or iAd. And, don’t ever click on suspicious ads on your mobile gadget. They can tab into your phone account and siphon money out of it.
