Let me start with a joke. 

Customer:
Walks in to a phone shop – "My phone was stolen, can you help?"
Phone shop: 
"Great, let me pull up your upgrade options, and by the way, you owe us £150!"

Fraudulent charges to stolen phone numbers is a serious issue that affects many people every day. A personal story brings this issue close to home. A family member's phone was stolen in London, and, as a result, the individual suffered around £300 in extra charges on their phone bill. The companies involved refused to acknowledge the fraud, issue refunds or initiate charge-backs. (Phone company and an app-store)

Pay-by-phone services or phone-paid payments currently lack secure verification measures, leaving victims of phone theft unprotected from fraudulent transactions. The perpetrator can easily use these phones to make unauthorized purchases that can run into hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds. They buy digital coins, tokens, gifts and tips with in-app purchases and pay themselves and acomplices registered as users on these apps. The app store pays the money out, which looks like legitimate income.

We believe that reducing the amount of money thieves can make from a stolen device will help reduce the number of thefts.

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What we want to be done:

Add a verification process, such as verifying account owner's name, postcode, or date of birth when processing payments charged to the phone bill.

Stop charging phone-paid payments to a loan on account. FCA handbook PERG 15.5 Q41A Para 3 clearly states that this should be charged to a prepaid blance. 

Phone companies should deal with the reports by locking down the account payments to protect the customer after the theft is reported to them.

Google should deal with the fraud reports when contacted by the account holder, at the moment they won't take reports if you can't obtain a transaction id from the carrier.

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Two factor authentication is not effective when the thief is in a physical posession of the mobile phone number.

It's time for change. Phone companies need to step up and take responsibility to protect their customers. We ask these companies to add a verification process to their payment systems to protect innocent victims and reduce fraudulent activities. They should also be forced to act when the customer reports theft/fraud as currently they just ignore it thanks to exclusions and exceptions in regulations of phone-paid services charged to a phone bill. 

Phone companies make this issue worse by allowing the charges against credit on account up to £240 per month which is not restricted by a spend cap you may have set on the account. 

Sign this petition to demand responsibility and action. Together, we can make a safer and more secure financial environment for all.

We also advise everyone to contact their phone company to disable phone-paid services and set a sim pin to protect it from being used by thieves.

Further reading: 

Home Office – An estimated 78,000 people had phones or bags grabbed from them on the streets in the past year: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/crackdown-to-halt-rise-in-phone-thefts

FCA Handbook https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/PERG/15/5.html

Electronic communications Exclusion which is being used but does not cover in-app purchases and purchases of digital currency like tiktok coins or virtual gifts. https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/electronic-communications-exclusion

App store exemptions with Phone-paid Authority https://psauthority.org.uk/For-Business/Does-My-Service-Benefit-From-an-Exemption

Search keywords:

Correlation id, carrier charges, phone theft, fraudulent charges, TikTok coins, SoulChill voice chat, phone bill, Google Play report charges, app store, app marketplace, unauthorised charges, UK Phone Theft, phone scams, charges I don't recognise.

Other people in the same situation.

(Yes this is not new and the phone companies profiteering on this loophole are well aware of it. Some good phone companies on the other hand have phone-paid disabled by default, well done!)

Here are some links of people affected that we've found with just a quick google search:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/292135065/unrecongised-purchase?hl=en
https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Account-and-services/Stolen-Phone-Google-Play-Tiktok-Coin-Charges/m-p/29706
https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/279581785/unauthorised-payments-taken?hl=en
https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Account-and-services/Google-play-charges-after-phone-stolen/m-p/41168/highlight/true
https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Account-and-services/Google-play-charges-after-phone-stolen/m-p/32873
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Tech-Support/Google-Play-Correlation-ID/td-p/1567842
https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Contracts-Billing/Fraudulent-Google-Play-Transactions/td-p/1131743/page/2
https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Account-and-services/Google-play-charges-after-phone-stolen/m-p/31150
https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Pay-monthly/Google-Play-Correlation-ID/m-p/2705308
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Pay-Monthly/Fraudulent-Google-Play-Charges-to-Bill-Correlation-ID/td-p/1595728
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Discussions-Feedback/Google-play-fraud/td-p/1748855
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Android/Unknown-Google-Play-Charges/td-p/1410582
https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Network/Tiktok-scam/td-p/18787