3rd party billing of non-regulated charges

This month a charge appeared on my phone bill that I didn't remember being there the month before. When I looked at my statment, there was a charge from a 3rd party company. How did this happen? How can I prevent this in the future? What other open ports exist on my telephone account powered by Microsoft Windows?

For my landline, I use paperless billing, and auto-bill-pay. I get emails every month alerting me about a new bill but if the charge is within a few bucks of last month's bill, I really pay it no mind (taxes and all). The problem with this system is (at least) two-fold:

1. I am probably going to miss a small charge on my bill.
2. I seem to only remember the previous month's total; if the bill goes up $2 a month, I wouldn't really notice until 6 months down the road.

This past month, my phone bill went up a huge amount, which triggers an audit in my brain. Sure enough, I look at the bill and notice that SBC was charging me too much for my DSL service. The way SBC bills is probably common but pretty annoying-- it puts the burden on the customer to correct billing mistakes. Let's say the advertised cost of a service is $20. SBC then bills $60 for that service and awards a $40 credit each month. This month they forgot to issue me my credit. No problem though, I simply call SBC and it gets resolved.

While doing my audit, I noticed a section at the very bottom of the bill which had this disclaimer:

I call the number shown above and am connected with a billing company that informs me of a service that our au pair subscribed to online.

Me: Huh? My au pair can add things to my phone bill?
Customer Service: Yes, anyone who has the same mailing address and is over 18 can sign up for a miriad services and add them to your bill.
Me: How can I prevent this from happening?
Customer Service: You need to call SBC and have them place a 3rd party block on non-regulated charges. If you had a teenager living in the house, you would probably already have one of these.

Sure enough, I call SBC and ask them about this, and it is a free block that can be turned on. I asked why the default is non-block but then I remembered that this is SBC. Everything defaults to open, non-blocked, etc; it is up to the customer to close, block and investigate. This is just like with the forgotten credits that started this ride.

Lastly, I ask her if there are any other services that I can block. I think I have closed them all, but here's what I have had to opt-in for over the years:

• Slamming protection
• 976, 900 block
• 3rd party non-regulated charge block
• Do not allow SBC representatives to access my subscribed services block. Stops cross-sell/upsell on every customer service call.
• Collect call block (may not work on all calls).
• Federal do-not-call list
• Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) opt-out

These features are all available on your phone if you haven't explicitly called the phone company and had them blocked. The last of these, I haven't received confirmation yet but I am working on it.