Premium Rate Services. A second cause for concern in commercialism, and related to spam, is pre- mium-rate services. A service is called premium rate if the receiver of the service has to pay an additional amount of money for receiving the service. From our study, we note the increasing abuse of these services specifically with regards to children and young people. Below, we describe briefly how premium-rate services will continue to be an area of increasing concern if left unchecked. (1) Premium-rate services have become payment methods for information and for consumption of services.148 Already their use has grown to encompass applications, such as (1a) SMS voting for popularity shows and TV reality shows, and (1b) obtain- ing visa information from foreign embassies.149 Often the payment amount is neither sufficiently transparent nor made clear to mobile users. (2) Premium- rate services can involve indiscriminate marketing by marketers and is also known to include mobile phone fraud. We state two ways in which this can happen. (2a) Often, a mobile spam consists of a SMS request to call a number. Unbeknown to the caller, the number is a premium-rate number. This means that the caller will be charged at a higher rate. (2b) A second tactic to lure and direct the caller to the premium rate number is to ring the caller and to end the call before the caller has a chance to answer the call. This will lead the caller to call the number shown on his mobile screen and thus be charged a higher rate for the call. (1) Premium-rate services are particularly appealing to the children and young people because (1a) of the wide variety of mobile ring-tones and logo downloads and (1b) they are made to ‘feel’ that they are treated like 148 Alhert., C., ▇▇▇▇, V., and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇, C., (2005) Implications of the Mobile Internet for the Protection of Minors, Preliminary Report of Working Group on Mobile Phones and Child Protection of EICN (April 2005), available at ▇▇▇▇://▇▇▇.▇▇▇▇▇▇▇.▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇.▇▇▇.
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