Nowadays, paperless billing is the standard, but a couple of decades ago, paper-based bills that came in the mail were the standard. We’ve all received the shock of an itemized bill ending in an eye-watering total at least once in our lives, but YouTuber Justine Ezarik (inset), better known as iJustine, went viral back in 2007 when she became the recipient of a 300-page cellular bill. The itemized bill, outlining every last text message, email, and data transfer handled by her device, went viral, amassing more than 3.8 million views. So what was behind this extreme example of wasted paper? At the time, AT&T was the only cellular carrier for Apple’s inaugural iPhone, and the one to blame for the billing fiasco. After the first iPhone users activated their carrier service contracts, they were given the option to select their go-to billing preference. Customers who failed to make a selection automatically defaulted to the detailed billing option. As it turned out, AT&T’s take on “detailed" was exactly that. A full itemized breakdown of every single data transfer processed found its way onto the final bill. Sent and received texts? All present and accounted for. Web browsing activity? Each session was made available for review. Outgoing emails? Every last thing to leave an outbox made the cut. Needless to say, the pages quickly stacked up, resulting in reams of pages. Not long after iJustine went viral with her initial video, AT&T reached out to her with an offer to make the switch to electronic billing. In response to customer backlash against the bothersome bills, AT&T was quick to address the situation, and by late 2007 e-billing selection became mandatory during the activation of new iPhones.
