Almost 200,000 people a year are being hit by scam texts which they are charged for receiving. Customers can end up paying up to £4.50 a time for the unsolicited premium rate messages.
The messages do not make it clear people are paying to receive them –and they are often being billed for weekly or monthly texts, which advertise competitions, gaming services or pornographic content.
Industry insiders revealed that more than 500 people a day are being billed for so-called ‘premium rate’ texts. Experts said most victims do not realise they have been targeted, as the sums added to monthly phone bills can go unnoticed.
Fines against scammers charging for the texts, and in some cases phone calls, more than trebled in a year to their highest level for almost a decade.
Last year, industry regulator the Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) imposed fines of £5.1million, up from £1.4million in the previous year. Some people have been scammed over a number of years to receive messages they initially believed to be spam and deleted.
