One Mother's Wake-Up Call

"I can't believe Cingular and other phone companies are giving new owners used numbers that are still subscribed to services," Roberts says. "I find it pretty shocking that they can't block previous text accounts. And I'm especially annoyed that it was somehow my responsibility to fix the problem and beg for charges to be credited back to the account."

The wireless phone industry doesn't exactly publicize that it routinely recycles used cell phone numbers. But with the rapid growth of cell phone use, phone companies say it's impossible to issue a brand new number to every new customer.

"We just surpassed the 200 million subscriber mark. We're at 203 million," says Joe Farren, director of public affairs at CTIA -- the Wireless Association, a trade group representing wireless phone companies. "Ten years ago, there were 33.7 million."

But problems such as Roberts's arise due to the quick turn-around in reassigning numbers. Phone companies typically wait only 30 to 90 days -- not long enough for online services to decide a nonpaying subscriber has moved on and to cancel the subscription. Cingular spokeswoman Alexa Kaufman says Cingular follows Federal Communications Commission guidelines for how long numbers can go unused between customers. "On average, phone numbers are dormant for about 90 days," she says.

Inheriting a number used to mean nothing more than receiving occasional wrong-number calls -- the previous owner's ex-wife, maybe, or a collection agency. But with Internet-capable technology, cell phones are now used for more than just talking. Now, cell phone users can subscribe to services charged to their monthly phone bills that upload ring tones, TV broadcasts, movie listings, dating links, NASCAR standings, weather reports, digital music, stock tracking, etc.

"If they have the technology to track exactly when, where and who I call -- and charge me 45 cents a minute when I go over my minutes -- why can't they give my son a clean phone number?" asks Roberts, whose persistence eventually got someone at Cingular to end the subscriptions bombarding her son's cell phone.

"Usually we weed all this out," says Farren, whose association members include major wireless phone carriers such as Sprint Nextel, Verizon and T-Mobile, all of which recycle wireless phone numbers and run into similar customer issues. "This is not a big problem."

Kaufman says Cingular has taken steps to "terminate subscription services once a number has been taken out of service." But, in some cases, customers subscribe to third-party sites that are harder for Cingular to clean from the account. "Cingular makes every effort to capture and terminate these subscriptions as we discover them," she says.

Despite Roberts's difficulty getting the problem resolved, Kaufman says those customer service reps were out of line. "Cingular will gladly credit the charges and will assist the customer to terminate the subscription."

And Roberts's porn fears? Cell phone smut is accessible through online sites, but it's not nearly as big here as it is in Europe because major wireless carriers haven't given the nod to charge phone porn to the phone bill.

Adamantly stating that "Cingular does not sell pornography," Kaufman says the company recently introduced parental controls "that can help parents manage their children's use of the wireless Internet, including helping to block access to content that may be inappropriate for kids."

But Gary Ruskin thinks all this is indicative of a larger problem -- and bigger risks -- involving children with cell phones. "There are plenty of companies that see cell phones in kids' hands as their next cash cow -- and not just the telecommunications companies. It's all of the 800- and 888-number companies and marketers," says Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a nonprofit consumer group in Portland, Ore., that is leading a campaign urging Congress to enact protections to make cell phones safer for kids.

He says giving marketers, or any kind of predator, more access to children is senseless. "There is a whole host of concerns that are raised by giving your kids cell phones . . . and the risks probably get bigger as time passes," he says. "Who is going to get your kid's phone number next?"

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