Many people do not know about 3rd party aggregators but the cell phone companies know them well.  This type of entity provides content for your internet ready cell phone.  You can download pictures, music, and applications right to you phone and have the cost charged directly to your cell phone bill.  The problem is that there are crooks in this world who are randomly sending out text messages trying to get some unwitting citizen to click on the link and get charged for something they never really purchased.

The cell phone companies claim to be in the middle acting only as a billing agent.  This doesn’t really fly since they receive kick backs from the criminals (this practice is known as “off decking” ).  The only solution is to keep watching your cell phone bill to make sure no odd charges appear.

If you think that there is nothing that can be done you are wrong because AT&T just settled back in June and T-Mobile was heading the same direction the last time I hear.  The market is slowly responding to this crooked behavior but we all need to be on the watch to make sure it doesn’t strike our wallet.