Cramming. You’ve heard of spamming, phishing, and pharming (or have you?). Welcome to the latest unwanted and insidious confidence trick that allows people to bill you recurrently for stuff you never asked for.

According to a well-rounded Ars-Technica article, cramming involves signing up a mobile phone user to services which directly bill their mobile phone account without them ever knowing you did it.

But wait - how can someone do this without your permission? Well, apparently they can. And the mobile phone companies don’t seem to care. They simply assume you authorised the third party to bill your account.

So if you see repeated bills for $12.95-ish for services on your account with innocuous names like “Orbit Telecom” or “MyIProducts IMail”, look deeper - you may have been crammed. It’s about as pleasant as it sounds.

Read the article for a better description than I could give here.

(caution: Urban Dictionary doesn’t appear to have caught up yet: They still define cramming as “Un-lubed Ass-banging”. You have been warned)