I purchase a prepaid wireless account from Alltel for my nephew. He downloaded some ringtones and acquired a text messaging spammer. It shows up on his transactions as Cap3OriginatingSms. From some other forums, I found that the Cap3 means Competitive Access Provider...one of Alltel's competitors. This Sms sends endless junk text messages that uses all his alloted text messages, then uses his minutes, then uses any money that is applied to his account. In one printout of 300 transactions, 150 of them were spam. This is a scam that pays this non-Alltel provider for every text message they send to his phone, and Alltel then pays the spammer for the message. They use numbers he has called to send a text message, then uses his number to reply to their text message; thereby, charging his account double for junk messages. They send in groups of 12 to 50 messages at a time. The do not provide a way to unscribe. Can any tell me how to stop these spamming text messages and the charges against his account? Thanks.
The first question and I don't want this to come across the wrong way, but, are you 100% sure that they're not just text messages that he is sending and receiving to his friends? I'm not totally sure that's what Cap3OriginatingSms means, I just checked my family member's prepaid account and I think that's just the online billing code for any text message sent or received on the line, it could also mean 'Cellular Access Provider originating sms'. Try getting him to send an intentional text message to you or somebody else and see how it shows up on the bill. That way you'll know if it's really a scam or if it's possible that he's sending text messages and isn't admitting it. But this line makes me think that the texts might be originating from his or his friends line: "They use numbers he has called to send a text message, then uses his number to reply to their text message; thereby, charging his account double for junk messages. " If he's not the one sending or receiving the messages, the first thing I would do is call AlltelU tech support. And yes, AlltelU does have a wait time of about 30 mins in my experience which is way too long. But they can pull up a record of who the sender and recipient of each text message is and they can block those numbers from texting to and from your nephew's account. They can actually completely turn off text messaging on the account. If he's not the one sending or receiving the messages that's the way I'd go about it. If he is the one sending the messages then there are a couple options, to have a talk about responsibility and how you want him to use the phone you bought, or to switch to the pay-per-day plan with unlimited messaging because it's a better deal. Sometimes, especially teens, can get caught up in texting to friends and in the world of icq and aim, don't realize how big of a bill they're running up at 5 cents/pop.
Thanks UFO, I will take your advice and exchange text messages again with him before I call Alltel. I googled premium Cms scam and got the info on Cap3OriginatingSms. Have a blessed day.
Sounds like Premium Messaging to me. He could have signed up for it inadvertantly when downloading the ringtones.
from the sounds of this is a Premium SMS Serivce. I believe thats actually how it shows up for prepaid customers "Cap3OriginatingSms"