In case you missed this last week, Sprint was accused by Free Press and Public Knowledge (who got the story so wrong it’s laughable) of threatening to turn off a Catholic relief agencies Haiti disaster short code because, according to Free Press, the carrier wanted full control over giving on its platform.  According to Public Knowledge, Sprint actually turned off the code – like I said, laughably wrong.

When contacted by Ars, Sprint explained what actually happened.

When your cell phone gets billed for illegitimate charges, you are unlikely to call the charity, you are going to call your carrier. Sprint, knowing this, requires that charities using short codes be vetted. They have a process for doing so and contacted CRS (the charity in question) to get them to file the necessary paperwork, and suggested a timeframe of 45 to 60 days for completion. The founder of CRS, in turn, apparently told everyone who would listen that they were going to be shut down in 45 days.

When contacted by Ars, the story changed somewhat.

Alpert acknowledges that Sprint made something like this request, but says he’s never been asked for it before, so why now?

If I had to guess, I would suspect that their previous efforts had attracted nowhere near the level of support that the Haiti quake did, so the amount of activity triggered a review. I haven’t talked to anyone at Sprint to verify that theory, but the fraud protection unit at my bank works the same way.

I don’t get a call until they see something odd. For instance, my card is used to buy $500 worth of stuff from a Wal-Mart in Louisiana and then presented to buy coffee at a Starbucks in Virginia moments later (true story, by the way). The bank called me – but not until after they had temporarily disabled my card.

My first reaction was not to say, “Hey, you’ve never blocked access to my card before, why now?” I understood the reason for their concern, and complied with their request to verify my account activity.

This is essentially the same process. The difference is Sprint, unlike my bank, never actually disabled the account, they just asked for verification.

A carrier’s responsibility is to its customers. It may be a pain for the charities that use short codes to complete the vetting process, but I really don’t care. I would rather they have to do that than wake up one morning and discover that an unapproved short code had been used to charge $500 worth of stuff to my phone – from a Wal-Mart in Louisiana.