If you’re managing cellphones for a family or your parents, or let’s say hypothetically you have a boyfriend who says he reads Consumerist but really he doesn’t or else he would have known better, you’ll probably run into stupid subscription and content fees from time to time. You know how people are when it comes to fake “free” offers.

Hypothetically, your dumb boyfriend may have even taken that scammy Facebook IQ test and entered his cellphone number for the results (results: FAIL), and since you pay the bill, you’re hit with a recurring $15 monthly fee from PlayPhone Inc. This is all hypothetical, of course.

If you’re with AT&T, there’s a simple fix for this: call them up and ask them to block purchases from that line. You’ll be emailed a PIN that will be required to authorize any future purchases. Then, in our hypothetical scenario above, you can print out the PIN, delete the email, then eat the paper the PIN was printed on.

We couldn’t locate similar free options from T-Mobile or Verizon, but if you’re a customer and know of a free way to do the same thing, please let us know in the comments.

Sprint does offer a similar feature called Parental Controls. Or you can just wait a few more months to see if Sprint goes belly up. Ha ha I kid, Sprint. No I don’t because I hate you.

(Don’t feel too bad for Sprint; they overbilled my account by more than $900 several years ago, then tried to stall on returning the funds.)

(Photo: lizjones112)

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