I always thought these phone lines where you have to pay per minute to talk to someone were a weird idea. I mean in general you have to pay for phone service per usage (or at least used to universally), it just seemed weird that you could start a business that would just charge people to their phone bill with no protection mechanisms at all. You call this number, and then it bills your phone bill. (I think that they transitioned to requiring a credit card?)
of course then we had the same problem with SMS.
