Direct carrier billing

Hi, I hope this is the appropriate section.

During the last few days I heard two different colleagues of mine undergoing the same experience: they were using Facebook's mobile app, they tapped an ad and were redirected to whatever stuff; then they found out their phone credit had been billed without their explicit consent, just one single click on a banner on Facebook!

Both my colleagues called in order to get refunds but they didn't manage in doing so, and it wasn't worth it anyway considering the small paid amounts.

Can anyone explain me how is that even possible? I'm aware of direct carrier payment providers such as Fortumo, but as far as I can understand at least a phone number is required in order to bill anything, and Fortumo prompts the user with some GUI before billing.

Thank you.

Contact Facebook directly and let them know about the ads.

There are ways to bill via a click in certain countries where the specific carrier allows the msisdn forwarded in the headers. Typically there needs to at least be a disclosure of the charges/service that will take place on the page where the user is clicking.

clovers: well frankly, I'm not very interested in improving the quality of Facebook's ads.

I'm much more interested in understanding how a payment could ever be billed without explicit consent, how difficult is for a user to get the charged amount back, and what are the legal risks if any.

Whisker: thank you. So, as far as you know, in order for a merchant to bill directly without explicit user consent they would need to have specific agreements with each carrier, right?

71104 said:

Whisker: thank you. So, as far as you know, in order for a merchant to bill directly without explicit user consent they would need to have specific agreements with each carrier, right?

Click to expand...

What do you mean by "without explicit user consent"?