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Poll
"Direct marketing" people should be
Hung, drawn and quartered 5%
Stretched on the rack 0%
Skewered the iron maiden 5%
Made to read Slashdot at -1 17%
All of the above 70%

Votes: 17

 My phone has been raped!

 Author:  Topic:  Posted:
Apr 04, 2002
 Comments:
Ladies and Gentlemen, the decent world of law and order which we cherish, has come to an end.

We have now plunged to the very depths of depravity and corruption.

My mobile phone has been raped.
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Just call me Mystic Fucking Meg.
I have just recieved a very disturbing text message on my mobile phone. It invites me to phone up a premium rate number in order to "win" something or other. The call will cost �1.50 ($2) per minute, or more if I call from my mobile phone. Rules and regulations are available from a P.O. Box somewhere in Liverpool. But that's not the point.

The point is that someone has sold me out. I'm trying to recollect who knows my mobile phone number:
  • Myself
  • My phone company
  • My friends
  • My boss
  • Some shops on the web (like British Airways, for example) who want a 'Daytime telephone number'
My friends are all ultra-loyal to me, as am I myself, so that rules them out. My phone company has just launched an advertising campaign to point out that they don't spam your phone, so that's either propaganda or they're ruled out.

That leaves my boss and the shops. Now, Nortel aren't exactly in a rosy position, but they're not that desperate for cash. British Airways, on the other hand, needs everything it can get. No doubt British Airways will claim hackers stole its customer's phone numbers and sold them, but that's an unlikely story. BA probably sold the numbers itself, along with its soul and its sense of British fair play.

What do you think?


Question about British cellphones (none / 0) (#1)
by jvance on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 12:05:01 PM PST
Do you get charged for incoming calls? Are you charged for retrieving voicemail and text messages?


--
Adequacy has turned into a cesspool consisting of ... blubbering, superstitious fools arguing with smug, pseudointellectual assholes. -AR

Question: (none / 0) (#3)
by tkatchev on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 12:48:43 PM PST
Where are you from? Do you get free incoming calls where you live?


--
Peace and much love...




Yes and no (none / 0) (#4)
by jvance on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 01:08:23 PM PST
I use VoiceStream[1] (Deutche Telecom) in the US, and I'm allotted a fairly large pool of free (read: paid for already) minutes, but time spent on incoming calls and retrieving messages are deducted from the pool.

I'm curious about this, because I've never been called by a phone solicitor on my wireless, and I've never received text-messaging spam. I'm assuming that such marketing tactics are illegal here in the US. I'm wondering what's different in the UK that allows cellphone spamming.

Admitted ignorance and curiosity, that's all.

[1] I chose VoiceStream in spite of Jamie Lee Curtis' highly annoying commercials.

"HELLo!"
"FUCK off!"


--
Adequacy has turned into a cesspool consisting of ... blubbering, superstitious fools arguing with smug, pseudointellectual assholes. -AR

How much do you pay? (none / 0) (#5)
by tkatchev on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 01:57:22 PM PST
I'm asking because currently I get 200 minutes per month for $20. Incoming calls count as part of these 200 minutes, but voice mail and service calls are free. SMS is unlimited if you pay an extra $1 per month. I get per-second billing after the first 6 free seconds, so these 200 minutes are really honest-to-goodness 200 minutes.

How does the pricing for your mobile provider work? I'm really interested in this.


--
Peace and much love...




It's not comparable, but here it is (none / 0) (#8)
by jvance on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 03:27:25 PM PST
I have 3 phones, 800 pooled weekday minutes, unlimited weekend, unlimited calls between Voicestream phones, free national long distance. The phones are for me, my wife and my mother. Mom makes 10 minutes worth of calls a month, so we're saving my parents about $20 a month by including her on our plan, with no impact on us.

Cost is US$84 with tax, so about $28 each phone.

You can look at all the plans and rates at www.voicestream.com.

--
Adequacy has turned into a cesspool consisting of ... blubbering, superstitious fools arguing with smug, pseudointellectual assholes. -AR

 
My plan (none / 0) (#10)
by First Incision on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 06:27:58 PM PST
I also have VoiceStream in the US, with the cheapest plan I could get at the time.

For $24.95 a month, I get 135 minutes (incoming and outgoing), and 550 SMS messages (I have never used more than 200 in a month, so it's close enough to unlimited for me). Voicemail and service is free. But I don't get per-second billing.

So my plan is comparable to yours, but somewhat more expensive.
_
_
Do you suffer from late-night hacking? Ask your doctor about Protonix.

more (none / 0) (#11)
by First Incision on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 06:31:40 PM PST
I forgot to mention, that is with free long distance to anywhere in the US, and I can call from anywhere in the US (provided I can get a signal)
_
_
Do you suffer from late-night hacking? Ask your doctor about Protonix.

 
In the United Kingdom... (none / 0) (#14)
by kingbilly on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 04:03:53 AM PST


Being a good Loyalist, I've chosen two packages from Orange, both of which are assigned to the one phone - a Nokia 7110.

I get 1,500 minutes of off-peak and 400 minutes of peak calls free per month.

After that, I get charged 10p/min at peak time, and 1p/min off-peak for all other calls.

I don't get charged to receive incoming voice, fax or data calls (not that I ever use the latter two), and calls to pick up voicemail are also free at all times.

WAP usage is taken as part of your free minutes, or is charged at 10p/min peak, 1p/min off-peak. Orange also run regular "free WAP weekends", 'cos they're desperate to get people using it.

International calls tend to be cheaper than from a BT or NTL land-line, and global roaming's nice and easy.

The cost? well, as I say, I have two packages running simultaneously - Everyday 50, and Everytime 400. Each costs �50 per month.

I reckon that's quite good value, and it's good to know that I can conduct important business on the move.


@==========@ ~~irish out!~~ @==========@

 
Answers (none / 0) (#7)
by budlite on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 02:48:45 PM PST
Here we go:

As far as I know, we aren't charged for incoming calls - I'm certainly not. We ARE usually charged for receiving voicemail, but that would probably depend on the provider and talk plan - I use Orange JustTalk. Receiving text messages in general is free, but I'm told Vodafone launched a sort of SMS news/info system, for which users are charged to receive the messages.


 
King Billy (none / 0) (#13)
by because it isnt on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 03:44:06 AM PST
Do you get charged for incoming calls?

No, never. Unless you count the monthly "line rental" fee for the privilege of recieving any calls at all. However, my plan makes up for most of that by providing a "free" �100 phone, and a ration of 50 "free" off-peak minutes a day.

Are you charged for retrieving voicemail

Some operators do that.

and text messages?

No. My main objection is not that mobile phone spam costs money, it's the fact that I am dedicating myself to carrying a cancer-causing machine in my pocket at virtually all times, and the only reason I stoop to doing that is because I want to be in contact with my friends and family. I am not carrying a phone about for the benefit of soulless advertisers.
adequacy.org -- because it isn't

Waste of time (none / 0) (#15)
by walwyn on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 04:46:42 AM PST
it's the fact that I am dedicating myself to carrying a cancer-causing machine in my pocket at virtually all times, and the only reason I stoop to doing that is because I want to be in contact with my friends and family.

I'm far to important to allow people to contact me on a whim.


Excuse me? (none / 0) (#16)
by because it isnt on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 07:08:07 AM PST
I'm far to important to allow people to contact me on a whim.

I believe I said "because I want to be in contact with my friends and family". If you want to act aloof, Greta, you just do that.
adequacy.org -- because it isn't

Thank you... (4.00 / 1) (#17)
by walwyn on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 07:20:24 AM PST
...for leaving your message Walwyn will get back to you later.<p>
Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.




Return call... (5.00 / 1) (#20)
by walwyn on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 02:20:53 PM PST
...just to say that the incesent chattering about being 'on your mobile', the annoyance of the ring tone, and absolute failure failure to engage in an interesting conversation I can eavesdrop in on, is causing a rise in my blood pressure.


My conversations. (5.00 / 1) (#21)
by because it isnt on Mon Apr 8th, 2002 at 05:59:02 AM PST
You appear to have missed all the good ones.
  • Directing a friend to the paraplegic porn sites on the internet. Including getting the address wrong and having to make him use a search engine. And also having to refine the search.
  • Explaining to mother that's she's a Nazi for thinking that the government should just have shot the Bulger killers - after all, that would be to stoop to their level, and we all know that Derek Bentley was innocent.
  • Letting a chum know on my way to work that there are some "fat fucking yanks" on the train with me, who are clearly only going to London to "take some fucking photos of Nelson's Column and the Queen Mum's rancid corpse".
You are right, though, my ring tone is the most annoying thing known to humanity, if you ignore Vanessa Feltz.
adequacy.org -- because it isn't

 
Maybe that explains it (none / 0) (#18)
by jvance on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 10:15:15 AM PST
I wasn't suggesting that you should become a spam receptacle.[1] I was wondering why this was happening in the first place.

Maybe being charged for incoming calls is a good thing, if it provides a justification for outlawing phone spam.

[1] "Spam condom" is a more accurate image.
--
Adequacy has turned into a cesspool consisting of ... blubbering, superstitious fools arguing with smug, pseudointellectual assholes. -AR

Spam johnnys (none / 0) (#19)
by because it isnt on Fri Apr 5th, 2002 at 10:39:12 AM PST
Maybe being charged for incoming calls is a good thing, if it provides a justification for outlawing phone spam.

I don't think we really need any justification for banning it. Remember that the UK is a Socialist's paradise. It's already illegal for any marketing person to call or fax you if you're on the Telephone Preference list. All we need now is a list for SMS message "preferences".

"Spam condom" is a more accurate image.

and it's one I'd rather not have imagined. Thanks a lot.
adequacy.org -- because it isn't

 
You forgot one person.... (none / 0) (#2)
by Blarney on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 12:41:03 PM PST
You act like you've never heard of a phreak before. These are like hax07s, but instead of playing with your computer they play with the phone system. It's very likely that they scanned the exchange prefix for your mobile with a device known as a War Dialer in order to leave text messages on thousands of telephones. Think about it. Why the hell would anybody pay for your telephone number when they could just use their hacking skillz to scan the entire exchange for free? It's too bad that you live in a poor country without proper law enforcement. Of course any miscreant who tried this in the great United States would find themselves behind bars.


Hacker Indeed (none / 0) (#12)
by Icebox on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 07:30:33 PM PST
No doubt the culprit is a hacker. I believe this is just the sort of thing that Kevin Mitneck did time in a Federal Prison for.


 
Show some respect (4.00 / 1) (#6)
by Anonymous Reader on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 02:35:42 PM PST
I am a rapist, and let me tell you, it takes a lot of hard work to track and assault my victims
Please do not trivialize my efforts by using the word rape to describe simple cell-phone spamming


Is that you BC ? n/t (none / 0) (#9)
by Anonymous Reader on Thu Apr 4th, 2002 at 04:08:12 PM PST



 

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