Divorce from MTS and Loveplanet

On October 15, a wake-up call arrived at the central dispatch console: my mother called me and told me that some kind of incomprehensible text message had come to her, and right after that she got off with a hundred rubles. An investigation has begun.

Smska from the short number 770999 read something like “you have the Star service activated”.
On the website of the MTS Internet Assistant I ordered the call detail for the current period. And that's what I saw in him:

date	Time	GMT *	room	Service	Duration min: sec	Cost, rub.
10/15/2010	10:14:36	+03: 00	<- 770999	sms i	one	101,6900

The fact that incoming SMS may be paid, to be honest, for me was a revelation. Although, searching for Habré, I learned that this is not news for the community: [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ]. Moreover, the Moscow court legalized this type of deception of the population . Well, very nice.
Still staying shocked by the fact that you can lose money just by receiving an SMS, I called MTS.

A twenty-minute conversation with a nice girl can be briefly described as follows:
- How can it be that incoming SMS is paid?
- Money for SMS is not received by MTS, but by the content provider, it's all their fault, MTS has nothing to do with it.
- Why does MTS give the opportunity to withdraw money from the client? It turns out any content provider can send me an SMS without my knowledge, and I will withdraw money.
- MTS has nothing to do with it, it's all a content provider.
“But ...
- No, no, no, MTS is not guilty, it is white and fluffy. These are all evil content providers ...
- I would like to return the illegally withdrawn money.
- We will now write a request for a refund, and then we will consider it for two weeks, and then maybe we will return some of the money to you. But most likely we will not return anything.
- I would like to disable the ability to receive paid SMS. How to do it?
- No, it's impossible. You cannot refuse our new convenient service “say goodbye to your money”.

After further investigation, it turned out that this very star is nothing more than an imposed service from loveplanet.ru.
Indeed, my mother the day before receiving the ill-fated sms connected to the service on loveplanet.ru. But not a paid “star”, but a free “Live”.
It looks like this. Suppose you are registered on the site, but have not appeared there for a long time. After a month of inactivity, you become an outcast, as if dying, and in order to fully use the service again, you need to confirm that you are still alive:
')


ABSOLUTELY FREE? How can you resist.



And again they are trying to convince us that everything is absolutely free. Rather, enter your phone number, and you can continue to communicate on the site.



Please note that the checkbox for connecting an additional paid service is kindly set by default. And the very wording “Connect a star for 24 hours” is incorrect. It does not imply that something will happen in 24 hours. For example, they will withdraw money from you.
Of course, no one reads what is written there in small text. Moreover, it catches the eye "free", "free", "free".
And the next day, SMS comes, the money is withdrawn. Moreover, the money will be withdrawn every 12 days, until you unsubscribe from the imposed service.

By the way, a tick with the service "Star" appears only if you are lucky enough to have an MTS number. Apparently, the fact is that no other operator, except MTS, has gone down to provide the content providers with a fraudulent money-making service for incoming SMS.

Here I can not understand why this MTS'u? Do directors not have enough money and we must take away the last from the citizens? They no longer know how to deceive people.

By the way, in order to unsubscribe from the Zvezda service, you must send STOP to the same short number 770990. Thank God for the service, it’s free (yet).