Spoofing

[quackberry]

While I was in the Northern Baja during the past months, although I have international dialing, I incurred $1,600 in roaming charges and GPS data charges on my Blackberry from places in Central America that I was nowhere near (e.g. Nicaragua) during times I know I was fast asleep. Well, I've been in telecom a long time. I know I've been spoofed. Heck, I helped write the software that AT&T uses to track spoofing!

I contacted AT&T Billing in an effort to have the bogus charges removed and their explanation was: (1) Even though I called and had International Dialing added to my account, AT&T didn't give me the right plan; (2) The cell towers in Northern Mexico may share signals with other towers in Central and South America, and, when they do, the user is charged for the distance; (3) If the times on the bill appear to be during times when I wasn't using my phone, then that means that that tower was experiencing a power outage at the time that I was using it, and I were billed at the time that the power went back on.

Has anyone run into anything similar? Other than simply refusing to pay and going your separate ways, did you resolve the situation successfully?

As you can imagine, the dim-watt AT&T rep assured me that "it's impossible" to spoof on their network "anywhere in the world". Of course, I can't blame the her, they're not trained to be helpful. She was only reading what was on her computer monitor. The only help she offered for the bogus roaming and GPS data charges was to help with a "Payment Plan".

[7horn]

I think this thread needs to be moved to the AT&T forum.