Yesterday, after posting here about the amazing cell phone bill we got from Verizon Wireless, I called their billing department in hopes that it was some kind of mistake. The lady I talked to didn't seem to be very interested in my problem - although she definitely was interested in selling me more services that would cost me even more.

First I asked her where it said on the web site that data usage when roaming in Israel would be $20 per KB. She insisted that it was $20 per MB and that Tom had used 28 MB - even though the bill very clearly said "kilobytes - 28." I kept pointing this out, but her mind was made up.

I have no idea how much bandwidth he actually used. He checked his mail twice a day, and he only downloads headers to the phone, not the full messages. So it's hard for me to believe that he used 28 MB, even if there was a good bit of spam.

But she kept assuring me that they could credit "part of" the charges if we signed up for the Global Access plan. How much is that, you might ask. Only $128 per month. Well, maybe only. She implied that was the only charge but when I looked that plan up on the web site, it looks like it's $128 per month plus 2 cents per KB.

Either way, that's over $1500 per year and since it's doubtful he'll travel internationally more than once a year, that's not cost effective. I explained this, but she kept trying to push this plan and saying "we need to get him signed up for Global Access" to the extent that I began to get nervous that she was going to do it without my permission so I told her very specifically "DON'T change anything on my plan." I guess we'll see when I get the next bill.

I'm not happy with Verizon about this. I know ignorance is no excuse and if they had told me they really were charging $20 per KB, I'd just chalk it up to our mistake for not checking more closely beforehand. But I don't believe 28 MB was used downloading email headers. I believe he used 28 KB as it said on the bill. I believe we were overcharged to the tune of $574 plus tax. Is it enough to make me switch cell phone companies next time around? I don't know. That depends on what happens between now and the end of the contract.

Stay tuned ...

... expect a cell phone bill like nothing you've ever seen before.

Tom spent ten days in Israel last month, at Microsoft headquarters in Haifa, Eilat and Tel Aviv. He took his Verizon cell phone with him, although he couldn't get voice service to work. It's probably just as well.

He did check his email a couple of times per day, resulting in 28KB of data usage. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Well, when I got the bill today, my jaw dropped. That 28KB cost us $574 - not including the considerable taxes and surcharges. By way of contrast, during the same month he had 121MB (121,000KB) of data usage here at home, which cost $44.99 (as part of the unlimited data plan).

 
My jaw-dropping Verizon Wireless bill
(Click to enlarge)

Now, he knew there would be roaming charges - but he logically assumed they would be the same or similar to the roaming charges in Israel for voice service, which is listed on the Verizon web site as $1.29 per minute. Apparently not.

Nowhere on the Verizon site can I find anything warning me that they charge $20 for one kilobyte of data usage when roaming in Israel. We're a bit pissed off, but we're also thankful that it wasn't a lot worse. If he'd left the phone set to automatically check mail every fifteen minutes like it does here at home, we might have had to sell the house to pay the cell phone bill.

Tom noticed that a colleague who was in Israel with him, who has Sprint service, got a text message from Sprint warning him that he was in roam mode and telling him what the charges would be. Overall I like Verizon a lot, and based on what I've heard from others about other aspects of their service, I'd never switch to Sprint, but I certainly wish Verizon would take a tip from them on this issue. Suddenly having to switch to AT&T to get the iPhone doesn't seem quite as bad an idea as it did yesterday.

I've been saying for years that the credit card companies, banks and the government - all of which keep telling us how important it is for us to protect our personal information to prevent identity theft - are themselves engaging in practices that put us all at risk for that very thing, and there's not much we can do about it.

Readers of my newsletters know that I've complained frequently about the "convenience checks" that the credit card companies send, which offer a blank check to anyone into whose hands they fall. I have also mentioned, over and over, how the IRS insists that you give them a street address and then sends correspondence there, where documents containing your social security number and other sensitive information could be stolen out of your mailbox.

Finally it seems I'm not the only lone voice crying in the wilderness about this. For the last week and a half, in my spare time I've been reading "Zero Day Threat" by Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz, published by Union Square Press. Its more revealing subtitle is "The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal your Money and Identity."

It's not easy reading from an ergonomic point of view; the layout and lack of white space or illustrations makes the text seem dense. But the information makes it worth overlooking that obstacle. The authors divide those involved in these cyberscams into three categories: Exploiters, Enablers and Expeditors. The exploiters are the cybercrooks themselves, whereas the Enablers are the banks, credit bureaus, credit card companies and data brokers that make the crooks' "job" so much easier, and the Expeditors are those who create the technology that makes it all possible.

Scenarios are presented in a story-telling fashion, but the Introduction assures us that the events and characters (though not necessarily their names) are real. All of these scary stories eventually lead us to Chapter 18, titled "What Must be Done," where the authors postulate that the strategies that have been shown to reduce fraud aren't being used on any widespread basis, and the Appendices that offer practical advice for helping to avoid becoming one of the increasing number of victims of ID theft and summarize the opinions of tech security experts gleaned from a survey of such professionals.

The main takeaway is that we are more vulnerable than most of us realize, and although we may not have control over the large companies we've entrusted with our personal data (the Enablers), or over the technology developed by the Expeditors, there are things we can do to make ourselves less of a target to the Exploiters.