My grandmother was charged $14.95 for 2 months of Digital VMail without her approval. It showed up on her AT&T bill.
There was a number for Digital VMail on the bill. I called it and found out that it is a service where they assign you an 800 number and you can receive free voicemail messages. The representative said that someone had signed up for the service under my grandmother's phone number and address using an online application form. She read off an email address that the person had used to sign up, and said that they sent out the personalized 800 number to that email address. No one in my family had heard of that email address.
I told the rep that no one had signed up for the service and she said she would cancel the account and refund the charges, which she did. She told me when someone signs up for the service the form may or may not ask for your mother's maiden name, depending on which site you sign up on. She said you can sign up on third party sites.
I requested a copy of the application to see what other information someone may have about my family, and was told by the rep that as the account was closed, she couldn't give anything out to me, and there was no way to track the account to see whether the 800 number that was assigned to my grandmother had been used or not.
The company did refund the money to my grandmother, however, their unwillingness to investigate whether someone had actually stolen our identity and was using the 800 number, which they should have been able to do, lead me to believe that somehow Digital VMail had unlawfully obtained our personal information from other internet sites and used it to sign us up for their service without our consent.
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