Word to the wise, make sure you know exactly what your mobile apps are doing and how they operate, lest you discover when it's too late, like after being hit with phone bill saying you owe $7,763.70. Such is the predicament Canadian resident and iPhone owner Jason Boutang finds himself in.

Our first thought was, 'How many 900 numbers did this guy call?,' but it wasn't a sexy voice on the other end of the line that drove up his phone bill, it was a translator application he used during his European trip. Not thinking anything of it, Boutang  fired up the app to help him communicate with the French and streamed a Calgary rock radio station for five hours over three days. Sounds innocent enough, but because both required Internet signals, Boutang's Virgin Mobile bill quickly shot up.

"They pulled the plug on me after the third day," Boutang said, who initially thought it was related to roaming charges. "I opened my e-bill and fell over. I had to get three other people to look at the screen to make sure I read it right. I kind of figured it was from the trip 'cause my average bill is about $200 a month."

According to Boutang, he called up Virgin Mobile to see he could get the charges dropped or reduced, but so far hasn't had any luck.

"They said, 'pay up every penny ... you went outside your neighborhood, you pay the price,'" Boutang said.

According to Canada's CNews outlet, Virgin Mobile is looking into the situation to see if they can lessen the charges. In the meantime, Boutang is pleading ignorance, saying the customer service rep who sold him his iPhone never warned him about the costs of using the device abroad, nor was he informed of any roaming data plans.

Is Boutang a victim of the system, or simply guilty of not doing his homework? Hit the jump and sound off.

Nobody wants to tear open their mobile phone bill and find that they owe $18,000 like the Verizon customer whose two-year unlimited data promotional plan ran out, and was then charged on a per kilobyte basis. It happens, though not awlays to such extremes, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to put an end to the practice of it calls "bill shock."

According to an AP report, the FCC is considering mandates that would require wireless phone companies to alert consumers in advance of reaching roaming or data usage limits on their wireless plans, which would effectively put the onus on the subscriber to keep bills from ballooning. But is it already there?

That depends on who you ask. The reason the FCC is getting involved in the first place is because it has received hundreds of complaints from across the country dealing with every major carrier. But what do the wireless carriers think?

A spokesman for Verizon Wireless said his company already offers customers safeguards against so called "bill shock," including the ability to look up monthly wireless usage through their phones and online tools to set limits. Verizon said it would even retroactively change a customer's wireless plan to help reduce an unexpectedly high bill.

Is the FCC doing the right thing by stepping in, or is it ultimately up to the customers to do a better job at regulating themselves?

There's a new bill floating around Congress that's been introduced by a bipartisan group of Senators that includes Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Dirsten Gillibrand (D-New York). It's called the "International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act" and if passed, it would require the president to evaluate the state of a given country's efforts to crack down on cybercrime. Those countries not doing enough could fall into the category of "Countries of Cyber Concern."

The bill also requires that the executive branch come up with a plan of action for changing the situation for any country that lands on its concern list. If a country fails to follow through and clean up their online security environment, it could then be cut off from various forms of aid and preferential trade status.

No doubt driven at least in part by recent events, the bill's accompanying press release even mentions that "hackers in China launched a large, sophisticated attack on Google and other American businesses." And of course the bill has the support of U.S. companies now being hit by cyberfraud, including American Express, Mastercard, Vista, and eBay, as well as a handful of tech heavyweights like Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, and Hewlett-Packard.

Read more here.