What did I just do? (Short Codes)

[Ksandra]

So, got an email from Microsoft saying I got $2.99 charged to my phone for some coins or w/e. Contacted them, said it was probably from a game but I had to contact T-Mobile.

So I contacted T-Mobile, and at first the dude didn't want to reverse it, but he said something I thought was odd. At first I thought my daughter might have clicked something but he said "it is a valid charge since you have to input your number to authorize the purchase." Which I know my daughter can't do. (She doesn't even know what numbers are yet, let alone my phone number.) So either something weird happened or the guy didn't know what he was talking about.

In any case, he did ultimately reverse it and then asked me if I wanted to block all short codes to prevent it in the future. I tried googling it, but everything talks about text messages not games or anything.

I said yes, figuring I could always contact T-Mobile back to have it reversed.

So ya...what the fuck is a short code, and by blocking them what does that mean?

[Corrderio]

IIRC it's a special type of telephone number that's a lot shorter than a regular phone number. Anything suspicious on your call history?

[Ksandra]

IIRC it's a special type of telephone number that's a lot shorter than a regular phone number. Anything suspicious on your call history?

nope. I really wanna say it was probably my daughter clicking something on accident as she does play games on my phone. No way could she authorize something with my phone number though like the guy said, so guessing he doesn't know, or some site she hit was fishy and pulls the number somehow.