Billed for International Text

[tenaciousd9]

Hi all,

I received in my June and July bill text messages made to US parties. The numbers which the Rogers agent told me were "225-xxx-2115" and "404-xxx-3320". The texts were made on June 2 from 8pm to 9pm (24 messages) and June 3 at 8:33am (2 messages) for the first number, and on July 30 at 4pm (1 message) for the latter number. These timelines does not align because I was playing football between 7-9pm on June 2, and wake up for work at 9am everyday.

Given the large quantity of text messages, I searched my contacts on my phone, my saved text messages, my work and personal e-mails for these numbers, and yielded no results. These two numbers are foreign to me and I have never seen these numbers. I also called these two numbers (with a work phone that has a US plan), the first one kept ringing and went to voicemail, the latter went to voicemail immediately.

The agent I spoke to on the phone insinuated that I made the messages and deleted these messages, but everyone that I'm on a texting basis is living in the GTA and either has a 416, 647, 289 or 905 area code. The agent also suggested that no one could ever text using my phone number, however there are plenty of situations occurring across various ISPs, and the concept of spoofing also exists.

Any help would be appreciated!

This is the first time this has happened to me, and 

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[RogersYasmine]

Hello @tenaciousd9,

We appreciate you posting your billing concern here in the forums! I can understand how upsetting it can be to receive unexpected charges on your bill. 😞

When it comes to text messaging, a person would need to have direct access to your personal SIM card in order to send text messages through your phone number. Also, if your sim was somehow compromised, you probably wouldn't be able to use your phone anymore and would need to get a brand new sim card to add to your line.

Just to provide clarity, spoofing is a technology that allows the caller to display a fake phone number when calling out, however, they don't actually have access to the spoofed phone number that they are using. This is done to disguise their true identity or phone number.

Is there any possibility that you may have downloaded some sort of texting app that would cause charges? Or perhaps someone has texted you using one of these apps which sometimes assigns them a foreign phone number and when you respond to it, you may end up with charges. These are the only other scenarios I can think of that could have resulted in these types of charges.

I hope this helps!

RogersYasmine

[OLDYELLR]

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@RogersYasmine wrote:

Just to provide clarity, spoofing is a technology that allows the caller to display a fake phone number when calling out, however, they don't actually have access to the spoofed phone number that they are using. This is done to disguise their true identity or phone number.

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As a PayGo customer, I get charged $0.70 for every text I send (and receive). I'm familiar with spoofed calls and have received irate calls from people on my landline claiming I had called them, when I hadn't.  I have not seen this on my cellphone because It's only turned on infrequently and I don't have voicemail. But are you saying that text messages can be spoofed as originating from my cell number and I could be billed for them? (I do receive the occasional spam text and always forward these to 7726 [SPAM] and keep track of them. I report them each year when I renew and Rogers kindly credits me.)