Seen At 11: Those Unsolicited Text Messages May Cost You

A news story that was on WCBS-TV 2 in New York on August 14, 2013 had the title I gave this thread.  The news is really that the FTC has now filed it's first case against the company for this particular practice.

From http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/08/14/seen-a ... s-may-cost-you/ , a text message was sent to a user's cell phone with a deal to download content for $10/month.  Then a second text was sent to her with a strange note, which she opened.  

"'I was told that by the act of opening the text message, I had consented to what they were trying to sell me,' she said.  That’s right. Chao was charged $9.99 for so-called 'premium messaging' just by opening the text."

Government officials estimated that Americans lose six hundred million dollars per year from third-party charges like this.

At one time, a very long time ago, AOL was offering some premium based service to it's customers. They were sent an email with the offer and in small print it read that by not replying to the email, you were consenting to the service and charges.
So my friend, who was an AOL customer but had stopped using them as an ISP and email provider, for many months, suddenly had charges against his bank card. Long story short, my friend who is a banker, reversed the charges.

I can see this type of marketing getting shot down very fast.