My phone bill showed a $40 charge on top of my regular $25 phone bill. The charge was made by a company called Integretel. When I inquired about the charge, a representative told me that a call was made through a dial-up modem from my home telephone line to download a small software program, which resulted in the charge. The program is a dialer called information services which allows access to sports, personal entertainment, and games programming. She said someone at the residence must have agreed to a liscense agreement before downloading the program, and agreed to paying the $40 charge. No one in my house including my two roomates agreed to a license agreement, agreed to pay $40 for the service. We were unfamiliar with the service and also could not find a trace of the program on our computers.
It is likely that the Information Services program was quietly installed by a virus. I have read several reports on this website where a virus was detected on a users computer at the same time that the $40 phone charge was assessed. My computer was infected by a nasty virus in March this year. The $40 charge was billed on March 12.
I told the Integretel representative I would not pay and I presented my argument about not agreeing to any agreement making me responsible for a $40 charge. I told her I suspected it was a virus which dialed the number and installed the program, if anything. She offered to reduce the charge by 50 percent. I told her I was still not going to pay anything. Quiet easily, she offered to refund the entire charge.
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