Comments on: The Great SMS Cramming Game

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 05:10:59 +0000

All the criticism here has a big flaw. Let me explain you why:

Let’s say you order a product online for delivery… as an example let’s pick a wristwatch.

Once you pay the delivery-guy at your front-door and he hands over the package to you, you discover that the company actually sent you the wrong product – which you didn’t order at all. Snap!

Now what do you do? Do you blame the delivery company for the mistake and make them pay all the money back? Or would you go back in touch with the company you ordered the watch from?

If you receive billable text messages out of the blue and you didn’t order them, contact your network operator and request an investigation. That ensures that the operator looks into their system and goes back to the aggregator or the content provider to verify the details of this case. Companies need to provide a confirmation about the opt-in initiated by the mobile phone user.

Companies like MBLOX simply do the delivery of the content and charge money in lieu of the company that actually creates the content and sets the price of the messages.

(written by someone who has been in the same situation as the author)

By: Cell phone text scam

Cell phone text scam — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 14:34:22 +0000

[...] Alan Looks like this is a common thing called 'cramming' The Great SMS Cramming Game | The Alphaville Herald [...]

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 18:36:54 +0000

I called AT&T to remove these charges from my bill. Not only did I get a credit for the full amount, but the service representative immediately suggested I get the “free” spam blocking service. She was able to take care of me in just a few minutes. It was a very pleasant experience for a change.

By: Paul Walk

Paul Walk — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:41:26 +0000

mBLOX is a well known scam company. One of the worst for it. I used to work for one of their service providers and i recall them saying we must try to bill users as much as possible!

say not more on mBlox.

By: andy

andy — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 02:50:07 +0000

mblox is a cram scam through and through. Anyone with your phone number can sign you up for a “service” like IQ test. Did you send a txt with caller ID on to someone you don’t really know (like on craigslist)? If so, you exposed yourself to your number being signed up without your permission and it doesn’t require any other authorization.

Mblox has offices in Sunnyvale, CA.
430 N. Mary Avenue
Suite 100
Sunnyvale
CA 94085
United States
+1 408 617 3700

I say we mount a flashmob and drag the CEO Steven Love into the street and pelt him mercilessly with old cell phones. And then proceed down the executive chain.
Secondly, I think we should harness social networks to find out where this A-hole actually lives since I’ll bet the sunnyvale office is probably just a mailbox. Pitchforks and torches on his front lawn might be worth the $40 he’s pinched me for.

By: Curtis

Curtis — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:21:48 +0000

Do NOT send Stop in response to the scam messages. call your carrier to complain and ask for a credit. The carrier keeps track of the number of complaints and calls to their service reps and charge the perpetrator when the number reaches a certain level. MBLOX is the major transmitter of these messages and processor for the charges. They could stop the fraud but they are profiting big time from them. MBLOX is responsible to police what is sent from their facilities but are not doing so. As soon as you receive the messges they have already charged your account so call your carrier and COMPLAIN.

By: Curtis

Curtis — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:13:17 +0000

The scams are still going full blast, raking in millions for the perpetrators. MBLOX is the provider that is responsible. They solicit others to use their service to do the scamming and to route the billing through them. They seem to have enough money and influence to intimidate the cell and telephone companies into continuing to allow them to make charges to their customers through the telephone bill. Strong action is needed by our legal and regulatory system to get it stopped. Looks like the Telephone/Cell providers are unable or unwilling to undertake the task.

By: Yep

Yep — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:55:28 +0000

”
GG3

Copyrighted songs, ripped textures, ripped motion data, ripped costumes and characters. The list goes on unfortunately and it’s still available in Second-Life. Sold at the markets and in-world.

Second-Life is lucky that these bills were put on hold. Otherwise a shut-down sooner or later would have been unavoidable.”

SOPA and PIPA are gone for now, but we have a stronger world wide version called ACTA in the works. Instead of USA user being barred from SL, now it is the world.
So now a few of the greedy content creaters who copy a design from the real world can mess up SL for all of the rest of us.
Time to save your real world money and stay away from buying linden money.
Possibly one day when people try to log into SL and find the site is closed down due to real world copyright theft, everything they have spent on this game will be like flushing money down the commode.

By: Anguissette

Anguissette — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:23:55 +0000

The Lab actually has been working to keep at least some copyrighted products out of Marketplace. Unfortunately, in my experience, they did it in a rather half assed way – I had a greeting card removed from my Marketplace store for being in copyright violation. It was a greeting card with a photo of a fluffy brown cat on it, which was basically to send to someone to say hi. LL in their wisdom deemed this to be Hello Kitty merchandise, even though it had nothing to do with Hello Kitty and didn’t feature the words hello or kitty on it.

Sigh!

By: GG3

GG3 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:29:16 +0000

Copyrighted songs, ripped textures, ripped motion data, ripped costumes and characters. The list goes on unfortunately and it’s still available in Second-Life. Sold at the markets and in-world.

Second-Life is lucky that these bills were put on hold. Otherwise a shut-down sooner or later would have been unavoidable.