Great work MyBroadband! Another awesome piece of work after the recent FHD/HD TV scam.
Lost interest in the forum over the last couple of years with all the off-topic nonsense and political discussions... Create a separate spin-off forum for this called myofftopic.co.za / mynews.co.za or something...
My suggestion for the next big expose: Mobile phone WASP content services!!! Every second person I come across with disappearing airtime is subscribed to this crap without their knowledge or consent. Kudos to Telkom and Cell-C for taking the moral high-road to disable this option entirely. As long as Vodacom and MTN take a 30% cut this problem will never go away...
IMHO I think the scammers/hackers have cracked the code (double opt-in) to subscribe a mobile phone or tablet user simply when browsing the web with a active IMSI SIM number. The unsubscribe options of MTN (USSD codes) and Vodacom (SMS) also make it very difficult to unsubscribe and there is no option to block it completely like Cell-C. For example with a Vodacom Data only SIM device there is no way to send a SMS to unsubscribe.
Yes! I agree with you 100%. I battled for months to find out how and why I would suddenly find myself being billed for content services that I did not knowingly subscribe to. And it still goes on. One has to be extremely careful how you use a smart device and scan web pages etc, because sometimes ( I am convinced but cannot prove it) there are "hidden" ads for these services embedded in web pages that trigger the moment your finger touches that area on the screen.
I have a Vodacom data only sim, that allows SMS reception and SMS sending but at an added cost. I have resorted to automatic sending an unsubscribe SMS to all wasps services at least once a week on all my smart devices, just in case. I monitor my bill daily. It is the only way to detect WASP services that may have been activated behind the scenes, whether by the user or otherwise.
I also want a complete and total opt out option, the same as is available for international roaming etc. I want WASP service permanently de-activated.
And to answer those interested, these are the steps a took to rid myself of most of the hidden data usage on my Vodacom accounts.
(1) I got rid of (deleted) the Vodacom Store App. It took many tries but it is now completely off both my smart devices. I saw an immediate drop in background data usage (disappearing data).
(2) I managed to finally get Vodacom to deactivate Vodaphone Live on the VHD1100 Tablet. I never activated this facility myself. It was activated on a visit to a Vodacom store shortly after I acquired the device. I never asked for it to be activated. This Vodaphone live activation exposed me to all sorts of data streams I was not interested in or using, but ticked away in the background. One cannot do this by yourself. You have to contact Vodacom and they have to send you a de-activation code. The problem is to get to an operator that knows how to do this.
(3) I removed the Google synch option between my devices. It took me a while to realise that whatever I did to clean up a device would automatically come back to haunt me because of the synch function. Once I am more comfortable with all of this I may re-enable the synch function.
(4) I spent hours going through every single account option on my Google Account and de-activated whatever I found that I could de-activate. Again, as I have found things I really want I am gradually re-activating some of them. The biggest headache was to get rid of the news feeds. "Here are some articles you may be interested in" rubbish. I no longer get any of that crap because it chews away at your data. Again I may one day restore some of it.
(5) I went through each and every App that came with the devices and either un-installed those that I could or returned them to the default versions that came with the device and eliminated every single permission and notification I could. What the operators can all do for us is allow us to decide which of these so called "bloatware apps" we want and allow us to remove them permanently. All the operators are complicit and in cahoots with the device manufacturers here. They sell us the devices with this junk activated and prevent us from getting rid of it.
(6) The only Apps that should maybe be restricted from removal should be ones that are essential for the proper working of the device. A suitable warning is what would then be required.
(7) I removed the default browsers that come with the device where possible. These browsers sit there in the background waiting for you to inadvertently trigger them and when you do, you expose yourself to all sorts of data streams you do not want.
and lets say this "bug" consumed just R1 a month per device, that is a huge amount of money.