Recently, a woman in Hubei Province, China, clicked on a “check-in red envelope” while trying to connect to free Wi-Fi at a breakfast shop. Afterwards, her bank card was charged three insurance fees, totaling over 850 Chinese yuan. She stated that she did not receive a text message verification code before the deductions and was unaware of purchasing insurance.
According to Chinese media reports on October 4th, Ms. Tan in Jingzhou County, Hubei Province, was dining with relatives at a breakfast shop when she clicked on the “check-in red envelope” that popped up while connecting to public Wi-Fi, only to discover that her bank card had been charged three times consecutively.
The bill showed that the payments were made to an insurance company based in Shanghai. Ms. Tan mentioned that she did not receive a text message verification code before the deductions and only found out later that she had been charged for insurance.
The insurance company involved has refunded over 850 yuan. The Chinese media report did not disclose the full name of the insurance company, product name, or clarify how authorization for the three deductions was obtained.
Similar pop-ups have appeared in scenarios such as scanning codes for charging, paying for parking, and sharing power banks.
In Nyingchi, Tibet, Mr. Suolang encountered a situation where, after scanning a QR code at a charging station, he was directed not to a charging page but to a page requesting his bank card number, phone number, and other information.
Suolang thought this was a verification process before charging and followed the instructions to input his ID information and submit, only to receive payment deduction information from an insurance company afterwards.
He mentioned that the related page did not clearly label it as an advertisement and failed to explicitly explain that filling out the information was for insurance purposes.
This news sparked discussions among netizens. A Weibo user commented, “I have mistakenly clicked before, the pop-up disappears too quickly before I can see it clearly, had to call to get refunded, deliberately designed like this.”
Another said, “Just paying for parking and ended up buying five insurances.” Some netizens expressed that these situations often occur when users are in a rush to pay or connect to the internet, with pages undergoing multiple redirections, making it difficult to see the actual transaction being processed.
Dr. Wu Shenkua, a Ph.D. supervisor at the Law School of Beijing Normal University, previously discussed similar issues of advertisement-induced payments. He mentioned that some platforms have a lack of stringent qualifications for advertisers and insufficient interception for redirect inducements. Dr. Shenkua also noted that some platforms prioritize ad traffic, only addressing issues after consumers make complaints.