Does your phone bill seem higher than usual? Look closely, past the fees and taxes you recognize. Do you see charges for services or companies you don’t recognize? If so, you may be the victim of “cramming,” where a third party has placed unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill.

Charges that have been “crammed” onto your phone bill usually involve some type of telecommunications-related service that you never ordered. That might be a personal 800 number, calling cards, a pager service, 900 calls, international calls, or even Web hosting. Some of these services are separate from your regulated local and long-distance telephone service; some are local phone service features such as call waiting, voice mail, or caller ID (again, that you didn’t order).

Crammers rely on confusing telephone bills in order to trick consumers into paying for services that they did not authorize or receive, or that cost more than the consumer was led to believe. And who knew that your phone company could even bill for some of these third-party charges?

Though cramming has been around since at least 2000—Missouri’s Attorney General’s office says it’s among “the top five complaints year after year”—the frequency has increased lately, per consumer and government Web sites and in news reports. More than 100 cramming complaints were posted on a consumer reporting site called Ripoff Report in January 2009 alone, according to MSNBC, with more posted since then.

MSNBC also reported that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received 457 cramming complaints against one such third-party billing company, ILD Telecommunications, in 2008. That’s the parent firm of ILD Teleservices, which does the billing for Liberty Online, Venus Voicemail, National Online Services, Horizon, and ILAB INET, other names that might show up on bills. Other third-party billing names have included Voice Mail Solutions, Enhanced Services Billing Inc., USBI, and US Credit Find.