Mobibro IQ Scam

I come to you with warning about a text message scam. Last night I received a text message from the number 584-98 that stated:

MobibroIQ Fun Facts billed at $9.99/mo. Msg&Data Rates May Apply. Reply HELP for help. Enter UR password on the website to continue: 4647

Yeah, they have a website. No, I'm not linking to it. I merely ignored the text message as I figured it was a fishing expedition trying to get a reply from my phone to confim it's a valid number. Fifteen minutes later I received the following message from the same number:

MobibroIQ: Welcome to IQ! For HELP call 18888906150 $9.99/mo. for 3msgs/wk. Reply HELP for help, Reply STOP to cancel. Msg&Data Rates May Apply

Then I received a third text message from the same number that stated:

Guest What? Unlike humans, crustaceans, insects and spiders have their skeleton on the outside of their body called the exoskeleton. For HELP call 18888906150

The first thing you need to know about any kind of scam, be it text message delivered or e-mail delivered, is that you should never respond to them. Instead I went straight to my AT&T billing statement and lo and behold a mystery charge for $9.99 appeared. The charge was listed under the AT&T Monthly Subscriptions section and had the following details:

03/13 Multiple Types MistyMobileAlerts Short Code: 94408 ID: 10186 Provider: Dream Audio Contact: http://www.mxtelecom.com Renew Date: 04/13/2012

It should go without saying that I didn't sign up for anything, but it appears that the default behavior of an AT&T line is to allow random entities to sign you up for monthly subscriptions. As I'm not a very tolerant man when it comes to crap like this I called AT&T's customer support and dialed 0 to talk to a real human being. After explaining my situation the customer support agent credited my account for the charges and put a block on text purchases. I didn't even need to mention my ultimatum: credit my account or I'm leaving (as I said, I have zero tolerance for these kinds of scams).

Check your billing statement (you should be doing this every month anyways), especially if you receive any text messages from Mobibro IQ or the number 584-98. If you're receiving the text messages I typed above then you're likely being charged $9.99 a month on top of your regular bill. Give you carrier a call and I'm sure they will credit your account and block the number without much hassle.