I open my phone bill online (which I had neglected to pay the last two months) to get a big surprise. I have a bill for an extended service for $14.95 from MYIPRODUCTS IMAIL in my AT&T phone bill that I did not authorize.
I called AT&T up, and they were very helpful telling me it was a third party charge and they could not take it off, they also told me that I could call this number as it appeared on my bill 1-800-301-3724 which I called and held on wait for about 5 minutes to get told they couldn't help me that I needed to call 1-800-286-4455. I call and get a customer service rep by the name of Heidi who lovingly tells me that I can cancel the service, but not get a credit unless I talk to billing, I wait in silence for a few minutes, the person who doesn't give me their name, but still sounds like Heidi tells me that they can't give me a credit, and I of course tell them they can, or they can be told by the state attorney general's office to refund me. I think ask how the hell did I sign up anyway, they told me it was from their website of which my reply was no, I have never even heard of your company, let alone visited their website.
She then said that it could have been from one of those pop up offers for like the $1000 gift cards or free plasma TV, or something to that effect where you have to sign up to various different services and spend 3-5 times the amount of the "free" item you are receiving to actually get, which I don't sign up for, I have a degree in Advertising/PR and I know most of those sites and offers are frauds, so I avoid them like the black plague. She told me that if I could answer some security questions she might be able to give me a credit.
They knew things that no advertising site has ever asked, like my mother's maiden name. The only sites I have put that on were when I was signing up to pay my credit cards or student loans online. Then it popped into my head, that last Thursday I had installed a virus scanner in my PC and had found some malware.
I have no idea how long it had been there, and I formatted my PC over the weekend because of it. But I strongly believe that the only way they could have gotten the security information they had for me, was to have received it from something that was forwarding it to them off of the online banking payments I use. The only thing I use my PC for is gaming, email, and updating my personal website.
I really urge everyone who has this issue to do a virus scan, and include the names of all of the viruses/malware/scirpts/spyware that they find in a complaint to the State Attorney General's office. Because if I hadn't formatted my PC, I could track it down and figured it out, but this place in my opinion is definitely using PCs to commit fraudulent orders over the internet.
Kelly
Hurst, Texas
U.S.A.