MTN Monitoring and Monetizing My Call Logs

This is part of a letter I have written to MTN (my mobile operator), following the events that happened after I made a call to my domestic worker's mobile phone. I recived a popup-style "alert SMS" message, followed by a standard spam SMS from the MTN short code 46163:

This morning I called my domestic worker from my MTN phone. Her phone is very basic. I can do SMS messages and not much more. She is illiterate, so she cannot read SMS messages.
When I had finished the call I got an annoying little popup message on my phone, followed by an SMS from 46163 claiming that my domestic’s phone number “just sent me a Caller Notify message.” [See screen shot above]
My first concern is that clearly my domestic does not have the capability to type out the message, let alone send it as an alert style SMS instead of a standard SMS message.
Secondly, she has no way of sending messages on behalf of 46163
Thirdly, 46163 is not a short code registered with WASPA.
But my biggest question is: who gave the operators of 46163 the network capability to monitor calls to and from my phone, and to and from her phone? I should also point out that I am the account holder of both phones and at no point do I recall permitting subscription services to be deducted from her phone, or have I given MTN permission to give calling metadata to anyone, and that it should only be used for the purposes of police investigations or billing.
So the privacy and compliance issues surrounding this “service” are of grave concern to me as a subscriber. Please would you explain what is going on?
Best wishes
Donn Edwards

WARNING! @MTNza is scamming its customers with "Caller Notify" messages and blaming it on who you call @MTNzaService #ripoff #scammers

— Donn Edwards (@donnedwards) April 26, 2017

I await their reply with interest, and will publish it as soon as it becomes available. I have called their call centre and discovered that the "service" deducts R2 per month R1 per day from the phone's account. Not much until you consider that she only gets R50 airtime a month. Then it's a big deal.
Update Friday 28 April: According to this tweet the call centre was lying. The cost for this "service" is R1 per day, or R5 per week. That's plain daylight robbery. My email has been passed from pillar to post at MTN, but still no one has actually replied. I guess I'll have to wait until Tuesday.

@donnedwards @MTNza Hi there Donn
Pls be advised caller notify is free for the first week, then it charges you
Subscription Price
Daily-R1.00
Weekly-R5.00

— MTN SA Service (@MTNzaService) April 27, 2017

Time for an industry "Do Not Subscribe or Contact" List

It's time the mobile phone industry woke up to the fact that their networks are wide open to abuse. I experienced it recently when random sums of money were deducted from my phone bill, after being "subscribed" without my knowledge to some "premium content" services. In this case they were run by Opera Interactive, who initially refused a refund and referred me to "Go Go Mobile", a UK/Hong Kong based company. Later they refunded me several times, presumably because they really have no idea what they are doing.
"Go Go Mobile" decided that I was a disreputable liar, and accused me of trying to make money out of my complaint to WASPA. They also brought up the matter of my legal dispute with a timeshare company, without the foggiest notion of what it was about, or how it was resolved. Clearly they seem to think that attack is the best form of defence, even when they are in the wrong.
My complaint with WASPA was lodged on 10th June 2011, i.e. 42 days ago. It was only "received" by WASPA on 22nd June (12 days later) and "resolved" on 30th June, i.e. 3 weeks after the initial complaint. I informed WASPA that I was not satisfied with the response from "Go Go Mobile" and pointed out the security holes in their system. This was sent to them on Saturday 2nd July, i.e. 20 days ago.
I would have expected this to be passed on to "Go Go Mobile", but a week later they had still heard nothing, so I sent it to Steve Hunt and Trevor Louw and asked what was being done about it. They declined to say, so a few days later I posted a note on the MyBroadband forum to add a bit more pressure. Now, finally, the mobilewap1.oit.co.za server is offline. Hopefully they have fixed the problem, although I doubt it.
WASPA seems to think that their members don't need a "Do Not Subscribe or Contact" list, but clearly the public has no protection against spammers and lax security. Had I been able to add my number and my wife's number to such a list, I would not have been hassled by having random amounts of money deducted from my account, and I would not have had to visit MTN or waste money on the phone to the Opera Interactive call centre. WASPA even have an unsubscribe system (unsubscribes@waspa.org.za) but you don't remain unsubscribed. They just don't get it.
Now the whole industry look like morons because of bad security, poor customer relations and lax or arrogant management. I guess they get what they deserve. In the meantime WASPA has yet to make up their minds about my complaint(s), or punish the offenders. What's taking so long?
Update 11th August: After 9 weeks my complaint is "pending" adjudication. Meanwhile, the MyBroadband web site has published a stinging rebuke of the entire industry called "Is your airtime quietly being stolen?" pointing out that this problem has been going on for the last 3 years and nothing has been done. They just announced in a press release that they plan to do nothing in spite of rumours that they might be doing something useful. Needless to say, consumers are fed up. Even East Coast Radio's Consumer Watch has an article about it.
Update 23rd August: After 74 days my complaint is still "pending" adjudication. It's been under consideration for 3 weeks already. Perhaps its just languishing at the bottom of a very large pile of papers while more money gets sucked out of the accounts of unsuspecting phone subscribers. There is one complaint "pending" since October last year. I wonder whether anyone takes these complaints seriously?

MTN8 Competition Greed

There are clearly no limits to how low MTN will stoop in order to recoup its advertising budget. Even if it means violating the WASPA code of conduct, not to mention the ECT Act and the Consumer Protection Act. When it comes to soccer, there are no rules; only greed.
In spite of the fact that my phone account is clearly marked as a "Do Not Contact" (for marketing messages) client, and in spite of the fact that I have contacted all WASPA members and asked them to put my on their DNC list, these knuckleheads decided to sent me the SMS shown above. Did I mention I'm also on the Direct Marketing Association's DNC list as well? MTN is a "Founding Member" of the DMA.
In spite of the fact that the message doesn't contain the mandatory "STOP" instructions, I dutifully wasted R1 and sent a STOP message to the 40570 number. I got the following reply:
So the way it works is this: MTN sends this message to a gazillion football fans, who each spend R1 (or more) to enter. Thus MTN earns R-gazillion in SMS charges, which it can offset against the cost of sponsoring the teams. The cost of the prize: 9 tickets it has already paid for. How cheap can you get?
Did I mention that they violated sections 5.1.3, 5.1.8, and 5.2.1 of the WASPA Code of Conduct? I have filed Complaint #13894 with WASPA.

WTF? Ducking and Diving from Oxygen8

Is there no end to the web of deception and deceit practised by Morvec, Opera Telecoms, Go Go Mobile and Oxygen8? Morvec are the guys with a domain and email address in the UK, and a box number in Hong Kong. Go Go Mobile have an 0800 number in South Africa but refuse to divulge their address. Trevor Louw, the "MD" of Opera Interactive is also the "Internal Account and Customer Services Manager" of Oxygen8 Communications with telephone number 011-218-5600. Between the three of them is an unhappy mix-up that has resulted in R70 being deducted from my phone account at MTN without my permission or prior knowledge.
On Wednesday Paul Barrat (Morvec) tried to get me to agree to a "full and final settlement" in exchange for a R100 refund. Today I complained to both Morvec and Trevor Louw that the promised refund had not been provided. They gave some feeble excuse about the refund only being sent on Monday. Clearly they are not taking this matter seriously, since it was promised on Thursday. When I pointed out all the ducking and diving going on, I got a heated and indignant reply from Trevor Louw:

With all due respect – we do not go around looking to pinch an odd R28 here and there – the matter of the fact is there are many south Africans out there who are not affected by this simply because they did not engage in any services. The mere fact that we know what model of handset you use proves that there was interaction between your handsets [sic] and the wap sites that Morvec run that is no co-incidence. We have no time changing dates and times – dates and times are recorded by machines that handle the interaction between your handset and the sites that are being visited. I would really like to think that you are a man of reasonable intellect, you have gone to many lengths to get this sorted – WASPA is the ultimate organization that can see us getting fined a lot of money if compliancy was at stake here, and in this light we take this very seriously especially as opera telecom. In the interim we have afforded you a refund; Morvec has a deadline that they were given by WASPA to respond to your complaint I believe they still are within that time period. In due course you will get your response and WASPA can make an informed decision looking at the evidence that is provided to them.

Of course this rant is only partially true, so I have taken the trouble to point out some of the discrepancies:

Had your company had taken my initial complaint seriously and given me the refund I demanded when I called on Friday 10 June, I would not have complained to WASPA. But your company refused the refund, and fobbed me off with a telephone number that doesn’t work. So much for customer service.
Instead, your company continued to bill me, in spite of my email to be added to your Do Not Contact list, and an Unsubscribe request from WASPA. All of these were “processed” by yourselves *before* the deductions of 18, 19 and 21 June.
Your technical information has changed several times:
From Ant Brooks:
According to our system, Morvec removed you from their systems on 2011-06-16 and also indicated that they have blocked your number from any further billing. They also provided us with proof of your subscription, with the following log entry

MSISDN: 27789389XX7 [not my number]
NETWORK: MTN
HANDSET: Samsung SGH-J700
DATE: 2011/05/23 00:01
IP ADDRESS: 41.208.50.193
Do these logs seem to have any validity to you? If not then we'll escalate this matter, since that indicates that you may have been subscribed without your consent.

From Morvec to your customer services:

Please see below opt in information and answers below

MSISDN	27833104XXX
DATE	23/05/2011 00:01
HANDSET	Nokia 5130
IP ADDRESS	41.208.50.193

From Morvec to me:

the below date and time must have got corrupted before they were sent, the actual date and time are as follows
21/05/2011 15:01:06

From you to Doris at MTN:

See response from the SP – I have asked for some screen shots as well, is there any way that you could collate this data with what you may have on your side to see if all makes sense?

Date	Url:	Handset Details	Ip Address	Shortcode
21/05/2011 at 22:01:01	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=160	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	31979
18/06/2011 at 18:43:35	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	42977
19/06/2011 at 14:09:24	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=200	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	31801
19/06/2011 at 18:27:38	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	42977
21/06/2011 at 21:20:42	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	42977

This user has entered into 4 campaigns in the last 3 days by clicking on WAP Banners or Text Adverts. We currently use 31801 and have also recently tested on 42977 for a new agency with seperate advertising campaigns so that we have one agency per code which is easier for me to keep track of results from each agency.

So please don’t tell me that you aren’t changing your minds. And where are all the confirmation SMS messages you are required to send? And where all my replies? There aren’t any.

I can confirm that On 18 and 19 June I displayed ads for “The Mob Club” on Cricinfo, but those URLs are c.admob.com, not mobilewap.oit.co.za, and I received an email from The Mob Club assuring me their ad campaign had nothing to do with the short codes mentioned above. Their short codes are 31927 and 31848. The full URL I recorded on my phone is: http://c.admob.com/c1/4/EkwmvDjF8bEkKw-kMaMDS074DFCA384006D60447277526020d4fd670629663d74205e?uurid=1F70C50F7F91EA49EC0CDB2CB703C45&uut=t&e=%28NEE1RkMzNjBENTY2MCw0NjAwNzA2NSww

This is all clearly documented in my blog post

In the interim you have refunded only the first two deductions, and tried to get me to send a “full and final settlement” for the remaining deduction. Presumably that is to avoid another R100,000 fine like you got for WASPA complaint #6868.

In the meantime I have had a meeting with MTN to try and prevent companies like yours from stealing money from my phone. They are being most helpful.

One other point I only noticed while writing this blog post: The last date of 21 June is clearly wrong, because the MTN call centre was able to tell me about the deduction before my lunchtime meeting with the MTN executives, a full 8 hours before I allegedly subscribed.
The initial “subscription” date has changed 4 times
23/05/2011 00:01 on a Samsung phone
23/05/2011 00:01 on a Nokia phone
21/05/2011 15:01:06 on a Nokia phone
21/05/2011 at 22:01:01 on a Nokia Phone
Update 3pm: Amazing how a "refund" payment that could only happen "on Monday" is suddenly sped up when I pointed out they were lying and not treating the matter seriously. I guess they hope this will make me shut up and go away. After all, it has only been two weeks since they ignored my first complaint.
Monday 27th, 4pm: I left a message for Andre Kruger (CEO, Oxygen8 South Africa) at 011-218-5600 to call me. Funny, he hasn't called. The call could have saved him a lot of trouble.
Update Thursday 30th June: Steven Hunt, Director of EMEA, Morvec Limited, writing from his WorkPC at 86.179.131.67 (Bournemouth, UK) sent a long rambling response to my WASPA complaint. I'll have to pick my way through it and respond to WASPA. It contains many inaccuracies and misrepresentations, but I expected nothing less.

How to Steal from MTN Cell Phone Subscribers

How Admob, MTN, Nokia, Opera Telecom, Go Go Mobile and Morvec are stealing money from my phone account.
These telecoms guys have an interesting new definition of the word "permission"; and it violates all ethical norms and codes of conduct. But that never stopped these companies from making a quick buck before.
I have finally figured out how it works, and how they "caught" me before. I remember on the day of the IPL Cricket final going to m.espncricinfo.com, the mobile site for CricInfo, to see what time the match would start. The site was overloaded, and very slow. I vaguely remember clicking on a display ad by mistake. It's an easy enough mistake to make, given how slow the graphics were loading. It was right at the top of the page, and I had scrolled down further already, but the cursor obviously hadn't moved yet. When this advert page appeared, I selected "back" and continued.
It turns out that purely by viewing this page, R14 was deducted from my phone account every 3 days until I noticed. I did not have to click any buttons, or agree to any pricing, or even be aware of what they were selling, if anything. Think of it as the virus of Internet display ads.
Last night I decided to retrace my steps, and see what happened. Using the built-in browser on my Nokia phone, I loaded up m.cricinfo.com and selected the "Live" cricket match. In this case it was England vs Sri Lanka. At the top and bottom of the page is a banner ad (from admob.com) that says: "Fun Mobile Videos Click Here". There is no indication of any cost involved before you click, and once you have clicked on the link the web site gets the MSISDN (subscriber) number from the phone. I have no idea whether the privacy geniuses at Nokia or MTN decided to give away my identity online in this fashion, but there you have it: it gets used for fraud without the phone owner's knowledge or explicit permission.
Later on, you might get a message from the robbing party informing you how to cancel your subscription, but by then the first amount has already been deducted. If the MTN network doesn't deliver the SMS, then that's just too bad. On 21st May I got no such message, so Morvec just kept deducting money until 7th June, by which time all my airtime was exhausted.
Last night I got a message after I clicked on the ad, and sent the "STOP" message immediately, but not soon enough for the MTN call centre to tell me today that another R14 had been deducted from my phone. So much for telling Opera not to subscribe me ever again. I guess they just aren't prepared to listen. According to the Morvec email I got:

Your cell number clicked on one of our banners via the mobile Internet and then accepted the terms and conditions [of] our wap page. Your number is automatically passed to us when you click on our Join button by the Mobile Networks.

Never mind that there is no "Join button" on the ad to click on. The text of the ad reads:

Scroll down & CLICK THE BUTTON RIGHT NOW & join the FUN!!
ENTER HERE
Bringing u great Games, Videos and more & great value, wallpapers and Screensavers cost jusr R10, Videos R25, Mobile Games R28! This is a subscription service charged at a minimum of ONLY R14 every 3 days which you can use to buy EXTRA content EVERY TIME - CLICK NOW ....
If billing is unsuccessful, retries for this billing cycle will be retried at discounted amounts and potentially on different days, by joining the service you are providing your explicit permission for this to happen. Cellmates has requested that your mobile number be made available.
By clicking Enter Here you confirm that you are joining the CellMates Club
For HELP please call 0800982175 or email themobclub@ymail.com - sms STOP to 31927 or 31848 at any time to end
Terms [sic]

What is interesting is that even when you don't click on the graphic and link Opera still steal your money. I suspect this is because the "subscription server" also displays the graphic, and therefore gets the cell number without explicit permission.
Surely the legitimate, legal and ethical way is to actually have a "Join" button that you would have to click on, that would initiate an SMS message to my phone, which would then require me to send the word "JOIN" to their servers? Of course it would! But these guys aren't ethical or honest enough to do that. They deduct first, dodge questions later, knowing that they can rip off a large section of the public without their knowledge. It would also be great if MTN would allow me to block these deductions, but since they get a cut, why should they bother about minor details such as breaking the law?

Update Monday 20th June: This is getting weird. Even though I displayed the above ad 3 times on my phone, and within the hour thereafter had R14 deducted from my phone account, "The Mob Club" (how ironic) sent me the following message:

We understand your frustration, however, the Go Go Mobile service that you have been charged for is in no way associated with our company and service. We suggest that you contact the provider of the service directly on the 0800 number they have provided.
We do buy advertising through Admob so on some occasions you will see adverts for our service and on other occasions adverts for services unrelated to our company, which is clearly what has happened in this instance. Our service is fully compliant with all regulations - before you join the service it clearly states the price, it displays information on how to unsubscribe and it has our full contact details. If you DO NOT click on the 'Enter Here' button to confirm your subscription you will NEVER be charged by our service.
Please remove any reference to our service from this web page since we are not associated with the service you are complaining about. Please confirm when this will be done.

I checked the 31927 short code mentioned by The Mob Club and it is run by: Opera Telecoms. So perhaps Opera should fix up their clearly broken system.

Update Tues 21st June: After The Mob Club (what an unfortunate name) protested their innocence, I displayed their Admob ad again, and checked the balance on my phone. No deduction. Interesting. I am waiting for answers from them and Morvec and of course Opera, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps MTN can help. I'm due to meet with them at lunchtime. So far R70 has been deducted from my phone account this month, which is over 70% of my monthly airtime.

I also called "Go Go Mobile" on 0800992230 and the loser on the other end refused to tell me their address over the phone. They claim to be members of WASPA, but aren't listed as such on the WASPA web site. They weren't particularly helpful or forthcoming, although they did promise to investigate. What are they trying to hide?

Update 4pm: I had a 45 minute meeting with 5 helpful executives at the MTN Innovation Centre today. It seems that MTN is planning some tools in future to help customers deal with these annoyances. Many thanks to Bridget Bhengu for arranging things. MTN are investigating my "subscription woes" and will be in touch shortly.

Update 22nd June: Paul Barrat from Morvec phoned me to offer a R100 airtime voucher, but then tried to slip in a "full and final settlement" clause. I'm not that stupid. Just because you put the stolen cookies back in the cookie jar doesn't mean they weren't stolen in the first place.
Update Friday 24th June: That "refund" Paul offered me has still not arrived. And Opera is getting a lot of complaints on HelloPeter too: 233 unhappy customers in the last year. Opera didn't learn from WASPA complaint #6868 where they were fined heavily. I hope they are fined heavily again, because they could go to jail if charged with fraud and theft. Maybe that's why they tried the "full and final settlement" con.

Saturday 25th June: The Mob Club is getting jumpy about their name being associated with this post. Yet they continue to do business with the company that stole my money, and they refuse to proovide me with any details about who they (the Mob Club) are. Why? What are they hiding? Seems like they aren't much different from the rest after all.

We think it would be far better to remove all references to 'The Mob Club' from your blog, not just strike them out, all you have done is visit our service terms and conditions landing page, you have never been subscribed or billed by our service. Frankly we don't like our service named under a headline of 'stealing money'.
Content services use URLs whitelisted by the networks so you may well see many very similar URLs for different services despite the providers behind them having absolutely nothing to do with each other.
We generally have no problem sharing company details at all, but we've never billed you nor have you ever been a member of our services so have no reason to give out this information especially as your original complaint seems to be evolving, again we have absolutely no involvement in it all other than you navigated to one of our services terms and conditions landing pages via banner ads on the mobile Internet and we would rather be left alone and associations no longer made as there is nothing at all contentious relating to us.
So what would be really fair is for you to remove references to us as there is no reason for us to appear on your blog and then we can all move forward.
We hope you manage to resolve your complaint successfully.
Thanks,
Helpdesk.

Well, [un]Helpdesk, I think the best way you can disassociate yourself from the bad apples of the industry is to stop doing business with the likes of scum like Opera Interactive. Then maybe you won't be so embarassed about who you are. But with a name like "The Mob Club" you clearly have no idea.

WASPA: What's a "Do Not Contact" list?

The "Wireless Application Service Providers' Association" (WASPA) are a strange bunch. On the one hand they deal with complaints about their members, but on the other hand they don't have a central "Do Not Contact" database.
Many of their members don't seem to know what a "Do Not Contact" database is. Never mind the ECT Act or the newer Consumer Protection Act, which allows customers to specify whether they want to receive marketing communications from a given company. See Chapter 2.B.11.1 of the Consumer Protection Act. In particular, I have the right "... to pre-emptively block ..." approaches from a marketer.
So after my incident with the Morvec scam, I decided to write to all members of WASPA asking them to make sure that my number is added to their "Do Not Contact" list. Four of the email addresses supplied in the Full Member database don't work. About half of the respondents added my number to their list. The rest are just confused. Many denied that they were invoicing me anything, without adding me to their DNC list. Some are confused as to what a DNC list is. I have had to send 8 requests to the list of 89 email addresses repeating my request to be added to their DNC list. Why don't they just use the DMA's list, flawed as it is?

MTN's Parental Control might block subscription fraud too

Cellphone operators think nothing of playing fast and loose with the accounts of their customers. They allow random businesses to deduct money from these accounts without ever informing the customer or obtaining permission from the customer. It's called fraud; if not downright theft.
Recently Noseweek reported on MTN's efforts to stop a particularly large scale version of this problem, but only because their call centre was overloaded with complaints.

"... MTN call centres and stores had been flooded by thousands of subscribers complaining that they had never requested any content from T Mobile, so the company had decided to undertake an internal audit - which had revealed that the content provider had, in the space of 10 days, sent out debit requests worth more than R500,000."

What puzzles me is why MTN would hand over the money in the first place. Did they guarantee payment up front with no questions asked? Are they that stupid?
Last week my airtime suddenly vanished, and when I called MTN to find out why, I was told of two deductions from my account on 5th and 7th June. I had not authorised anyone to deduct anything. The call centre told me the money had been deducted by "Opera Telecom" and when I called them on 083-916-3089 they said they were unable to provide me with a refund. This is a violation of the WASPA code of conduct.
Today I tried a different approach, which seems to be working. I called Opera's other number, 084-194-2222 and asked for the name of the MD. It turns out his name is Trevor Louw but the company got somewhat alarmed when I asked for his ID number. Why did I need that? I explained that I needed it for the case of fraud I planned to file at the police station. I explained that since they had deducted the money from my account, and had refused to provide a refund, I was now taking the matter further.
They told me that they had done the deduction on behalf of Morvec Ltd, a company whose South African landline number 011-461-3294 is out of service, their postal address is in Hong Kong and their email contact address is in the UK. I told Opera that I wasn't prepared to wait for them to get the refund from Morvec (good luck with that) before they pass it on to me. They could refund me today, since they had made the deduction, and then obtain the refund from Morvec later.

Parental Control

After chatting to the MTN call centre again, I was told there is a "parental control" service that you can access by dialling *101# from an MTN phone. This allows you to block "Adult" content, "Gambling" and "Instant Messaging" services. It only blocks web access to these services. I also find it kind of insulting that they would call it "Parental" control when all I'm trying to do is protect my phone account from MTN's arrogance. Their billing system is the child out of control, not me. It doesn't even add correctly.
Nonetheless it's a start, albeit a pretty feeble one. Vodacom has something similar.

MMS Messages

What really burns me about these services is that they send unsolicited MMS messages to my phone. Since my phone isn't configured for MMS, how do they suppose I signed up for this service? When a MMS message comes to my phone, I get a notification to go to a particular URL to read the message. I just delete the notification. Now MTN's billing system says I "subscribed" via GPRS. That would require me to enter my cell phone number, which I did not do. In fact, I didn't even use GPRS on that day. MTN assumes that their customers are dumb enough to subscribe to these services. Maybe some are, but I'm not one of them. Now I am awaiting a call from Monwabisi Mabude, the account manager who just may be able to sort this out at MTN.
Update 4.30pm: I got to speak to Trevor Louw at Opera Interactive, who vacillated between being smug, officious and helpful. His company does the billing on behalf of scum like Morvec, and Opera's business ethics are such that they do NOT have a Do Not Contact list. Nonetheless he assures me that they are taking my complaint seriously and they are waiting for "proof" from Morvec that I signed up. How do I prove that I didn't sign up, or that I didn't receive anything from them to confirm my subscription?
I have a growing suspicion that they will say that they sent me a message telling me that I should OPT OUT if I don't want to subscribe, which is illegal.

Update Fri 17th: Opera Interactive have sent me a R30 "goodwill" airtime refund, in spite of Morvec's "proof" that I "visited a WAP website" on 23/5/2011 at midnight. Funny, I was asleep at the time. I checked the "Sent Items" on my phone and have send nothing between 16h26 on 21/05 and 9am on 23/05. So the confirmation SMS that Morvec should have sent wasn't sent. And I certainly didn't reply to one. And Opera have confirmed that they have added me to their "Do Not Contact" list. The one they said they don't have.

Update 5.30pm: Morvec has changed the date on which the subscription supposedly happened (how convenient), but still need to explain the following item in the WASPA Code of Conduct:

11.3.1. If a subscription service is initiated by entering a customer's mobile number on a web page or WAP site, then a separate confirmation message must be sent to the customer's mobile handset in order to prove that the number entered matches the customer's mobile handset number.