Text messages you cannot afford to receive

Text messaging is being exploited by unscrupulous firms to make thousands of pounds out of unsuspecting phone users.

Cowboy operators of specialist premium number services are sending messages at random to phones, and charging the users for services they unwittingly sign up for by replying to the message.

In one recent case a service run by a firm called Netsize, based in Slough, sent a message saying "Hi sexy" to a random selection of phones. Users who replied were inundated with messages costing £1.50 each. The company is being investigated by ICSTIS, the organisation responsible for policing premium numbers.

Another firm sent out a message saying: "You've won £150." ICSTIS has also had reports of children receiving explicit and inappropriate messages as a result of the Hi Sexy service. Robert Dwight of ICSTIS said: "Among the general chat received by anyone who signed up there would have been a number of adult messages, often from those who would not realise who was receiving them."

Premium service providers have a code of practice, and under data protection law it is illegal to send junk messages using computer programmes to randomly generate numbers. ICSTIS last year fined four companies up to £10,000 each for not revealing the costs of services.

Simon Rockman of What Mobile? magazine said: "It is up to the networks to address. They are making money out of it, in some ways they are acting as a bank, and it is in their power to stop it."

A spokesman for network Vodafone said it had contacted suppliers to ensure they comply with codes of conduct, while BT Cellnet said networks should work together to combat the problem, which will be raised at the SMS 2002 conference on text messaging in London next week.

More than 12 billion text messages were sent last year, 42 million a day in December, via SMS (short message system). Most are from user to user, costing around 12p, but a growing number are specialist services offering anything from sports results to downloadable ringtones.

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