Hi.
I am Captain Jack Sparrow, from the PC Review forums. I’ve created this website to help raise awareness about a UK-wide scam, involving the big four mobile providers, EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. Having been scammed through a service which they are operating, known as Payforit, they are unjustly charging their customers’ phone bills.
I’ve only just started this website, but if you stay with me, I will keep you posted on my journey of reclaiming my money, and explain each step of the way.
Browse safely when you’re using mobile data, and if any pop-up ads appear, you should close them immediately. It only takes one malicious pop-up ad and you could be paying every week for a service you didn’t ask for, nor authorized any payments.
At some point, I will provide a technical insight on how this scam works through your phone, and how to prevent it from happening. I’ll also be detailing the avenues you can persue to try and get your money back, if you have been caught.
Until then, browse wisely!
The Payforit SCAM 
Thank you Mr Sparrow for setting up a dedicated site. I too have been scammed 😦 the payforit system is flawed & should be abolished. The networks should have their own individual pay options (like a digital wallet,the idiots at 3 could call it 3pay 😀 three used to have a payg tariff called 3pay lol)
Anyway back to the scam.. Its advanced.. just a quick pop up which auto closes & auto subscribes you 😦 Im fed up of being told by three that I clicked on something. ERR NO I DIDN’T. Now to get to the bottom of this there needs to be an investigation by a crime investigation team ( & also preferably independent) to find the culprits.. theyre masked..multi layered people/businesses… txtnation will state they only bill (so called aggregator) TAPVIDS has been set up for the purpose to scam.. seems like many front companies.. just need to follow the breadcrumbs 😉
The networks dont want to take any responsibility despite theyre the ones allowing the scams to take place. They set it up as such..all in it together..so whichever network youre on youll still be a victim. Phonepayplus is a joke (just as ofcom is)
A scam operation that gets fined still makes a considerable profit despite the fines, its still lucrative for them. (& when the going gets tough just set up a new front company & repeat-like scammers everywhere e.g ebay)
Do you think a house of commons petition is viable?
Its a disgrace that we the people are not safeguarded from the beginning & even after the fact… just bureaucracy… govt bodies, rogue traders & the networks getting paid. They never go to the root cause ( in this case payforit/the networks)
If customer/victim complains hard enough, network just refunds as a gesture of goodwill (if youre lucky) but network doesnt pursue the third party who is scamming. Also the network state they cant guarantee it wont happen again. They say that they cant stop it. Thats because the networks got together to start this thing in the first place..without any safeguard or opt in/out choices for the consumer. They allow the facilitation of theft/scams to take place but cant be held into account ( rather like the government ).
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Anon, thank you for your comment.
Payforit is indeed a flawed system, with no true safeguards. Since I’ve set up this website, I have had the issue resolved by Three, but I do have a series of blog posts in the works, detailing the long and cumbersome journey I took in order to avoid paying these charges.
Sadly even if these companies are shut down by PhonepayPlus, you can bet that another one will spring up within a few weeks, and this is why the Payforit system needs to be either shut down, or overhauled to include proper safeguards.
Strangely enough, I have never been scammed on eBay in my 7 years of using it. PayPal is a prime example of how proper payment safeguards should be implemented.
Unfortunately, a petition against Payforit has already been submitted, but it only got 8 signatures, presumably because not many people are even aware of Payforit until it’s too late.
https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/50200
Three did provide account credit as a “gesture of goodwill”, so they still have to pay the scammers. This isn’t ethical. As they cannot stop it, I have installed a VPN at my home, and configured my phone to use this as an “always on” VPN, which can’t be disabled without using a PC to remove the configuration profile.
I believe that this will provide adequate safeguards against the Payforit scam from my end, however a consumer should not have to do this, just to stop themselves from unsolicited charges.
The best thing that you can do is to complain to PhonepayPlus about the company involved. Keep hassling your network operator, don’t give up.
Unfortunately, you must realize that you may not get this money back, so all I can recommend is that you firstly install an ad blocker on your device. Then configure it to use a proxy server or better yet, use a VPN service. You do have to pay for a VPN service, unless you operate your own private VPN server. In my case I bought a Raspberry Pi for £30 and installed this at my home with a VPN server which my phone can connect to. This works because websites will think you’re connecting from a fixed-line broadband connection, which cannot be charged through Payforit.
Consider the amount of fraudulent charges that this little £30 device can save me from, and I know that it was worth it.
Also, share my site with anybody you know who has been affected by this scam. Raise awareness, the more people who know about this scam and how it works, the better it will be for everyone.
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In USA unauthorised billing is called ‘cramming’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_billing
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The scam is still ongoing..(even more so…just look on twitter) just the brand names have changed. Incidentally the so called regulator ‘phonepayplus’ has also gone for a name change (same crap, same old same old..they blame the victim but with a new name ‘PSA’ ‘Phone Paid Services Authority’ WTF they need to be shut down along with the scam companies/aggregators & along with ‘payforit’. They should be made to pay back every single penny they took via the method they took it with
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The auto click/subscribe pop up/ side loaded via a legit website (advertisement style that disappears in a nano second)…The scammer malicious billing script must also have access to the ‘legitimate’ part of the billing script (the part where customer is charged via network access /payforit (how does aggregator give access to that part?..’aggregator’ has legitimate part of billing script so is aggregator allowing fraudster total access? Cant run two billing scripts one legit other not..must be integrated right? The part where browser is hijacked /sideloaded whichever way the aggregator (txtnation/mGage/oxygen8) is in on it…despite txtnation etc blaming ‘client’ aggregator knows who client is otherwise how can they bill ‘their client’ what is really going on??? These dumb fraud prevention agencies are not investigating anything…there is an electronic paper trail. Every network denying any underhand goings on… txtnation/mGage/oxygen8 claiming theyre just billing provider.. (despite txtnations website claiming they offer FULL package…what? Heres an interesting post about txtnation https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/scam-alert-txtnation-com-tricking-people-that-they-proide-merchant-accounts.1113376/
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