WE return in this episode to that perpetual source of digital age fury, the cellphone bill.

Q. In early February, I received texts on my BlackBerry inviting me to subscribe to two different short message services. One is called Gossip and the other is called HoroscopeGenie. I don’t believe in horoscopes and don’t care about celebrity gossip, so I deleted both texts without opening them.

But when I checked my latest AT&T bill, I discovered that I was charged $9.99 for a month for both. I called AT&T and spoke with a very nice representative who informed me that I would have to open the text message in order to read the fine print at the bottom, which would give me the option to opt out of the default subscription.

AT&T gave me a refund, but a quick scour of the Internet reveals a number of other complaints about both of these services. I have to assume that a lot of people never notice these charges and then pay them. Can you investigate this egregious behavior? I’d especially like to know if the SMS service providers alone are responsible, or whether AT&T is complicit in this obnoxious ruse.

Joann Lindenmayer

North Grafton, Mass.

A. Congratulations, Ms. Lindenmayer, you’ve been crammed! Yes, there is a name for this pain, and it predates SMS services by many years. Mysterious charges — for an assortment of memberships and services — have long been showing up on wire-line telephone bills. These charges are defined as crams if they come from a third party and if consumers didn’t ask for them. The advent of text messaging appears to have been a marvelous boost for this deathless con.