It all began on a Friday night…

It was Friday the 5th August 2016. Take note that this was a Friday night. I’ll explain why later.

I was happily browsing a music-related WordPress site which blogged about upcoming music. Sometimes, it linked music streams for visitors to listen to. The site will not be named because it is irrelevant. The owner of the site is obviously wanting to make money off this, so there were adverts featured around the site’s content.

As I’m scrolling down, I notice an ad about winning an iPhone 6S. No thanks, I’m happy with my 3 year old BlackBerry. I scroll past the advert, and this is where it all went wrong.

Without warning, 3 popup adverts opened at once in separate tabs. I closed each of them within 3 seconds of them opening.

But that wasn’t quick enough. About 5 minutes later, I received this text…

You don’t know that you’ve been charged… until it’s too late!

This is really bad news. Once you’ve seen this text message, it’s too late, a charge has been made to your monthly mobile bill, or deducted from your prepaid credit.

And so begins the horrible process of chasing Three, TAPVIDS and PhonepayPlus.

You can be charged, just for having the misfortune of landing on a maliciously crafted advert.

At the beginning of this post, I explained that you should bear in mind that this happened on a Friday night.

This scam is most prominent on a Friday night because the scammer’s “customer services” are closed during the weekend, so you can’t call them to cancel the subscription service until Monday. This means that you get charged for another week! Scammers are well aware of this, so they insert large amounts of these maliciously crafted adverts into advertising networks late on a Friday night. Advertising networks serve adverts on many legitimate websites, so it doesn’t matter what websites you visit. You can be caught on any website that uses an advertising network to generate revenue.

This was just the start of a long and painful journey. You won’t like what’s ahead.