There are quite a many “scams” out there on popular social network site Facebook.  If you have a Facebook account I’m sure you have gotten messages saying “someone answered a question about you”, “find your lover”, etc. etc.  While a lot of these are harmless time wasters, some are trying to get you to sign up for services you don’t want.  They are forced to tell you how they are going to screw you, but usually the terms and conditions are written so small you can hardly read them or hide the link where you wouldn’t naturally look, because of this, I label them “scams”.  These type of scams are also making their way into iPhone games via seemingly harmless games and ads.

The way they work is that they trick you into taking a quiz, seeing a picture, seeing who viewed your profile, or any numorous other scrupulous methods.  Once you complete the task they then ask you to enter a phone number in order to complete offer.  When doing this you are “unknowingly” (tricked) signing up for a monthly subscription that charges directly to your cell phone bill.  SMS subscription scams are among the most lucrative offers to game publishers because users get a recurring fee of $10 – $25 per month until they are able to terminate the subscription. Many users never notice them, and those that do usually have a lot of trouble getting them shut off.

I encourage everyone to please take caution when giving out any information to 3rd party companies on the internet if you don’t know exactly what they are doing with that info.