How is ATT scamming you? Highly questionable ethics? Haha please.  You are choosing to use the functionality on the phone you bought and somehow that becomes ATT's responsibility to police your data usage?  You are responsible for your actions and choices.  iMessage is Apples product in their OS; not ATT's.  And besides, text messages are small...I would guess you have send thousdands upon thousands to use hundreds of MB's of data.  If you dont like the functionality of iMessage, turn it off.