Ireland Cracks Down on Online Scammers 183
bizpile writes "Ireland has decided to take some extreme measures to crack down on one type of online scam. They have decided to suspend direct dialing to 13 countries (mostly South Pacific Islands) in order to halt the use of auto-dialers. The measure, announced by Ireland's Commission for Communications Regulation, came in response to hundreds of consumer complaints about the scams. ComReg acknowledges that its move is extreme but says that previous efforts to raise awareness of the problem failed to significantly diminish complaints. ComReg will keep the block in place for six months, after which it will be reviewed. All direct-dial calls will initially be blocked, although the regulator is also compiling a "white list" of legitimate numbers that consumers have requested to call."
What's the scam ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose the line owner could claim innocence, but they'd have to be damn convincing about it if lots of people suddenly start dialling this high-cost line.
Simon
How to deal with Spam/Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
BT, here in the UK, have been doing some similar actions recently although on a less extreme scale.(One of which is maximum cost control, they refuse to route any call where the cost is higher than the maximum cost for an inland premium-rate call in the UK).
Its good to see regulators and firms acting to protect the more clueless users from themselves, as long as it doesn't prevent people requesting a line be opened.
power of boycott (Score:3, Interesting)
White lists (Score:3, Interesting)
So what's going to stop owners of those numbers in foreign countries to send an email requesting that their number is whitelisted?
Re:Will this ever work (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's the scam ? (Score:3, Interesting)
A runner, or fraught with difficulty?
Lets loose premium rate dialup. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to charge for a service get the customer to enter their credit card details / set up an account. If you think they would be unwilling, then that speaks volumes about your business.
Re:What's the scam ? (Score:5, Interesting)
At that point I think BT made the billing cycles the same!
Pin codes on international/premium rate (Score:5, Interesting)
Does any spyware/anti-virus software check this (and I don't mean check for a piece of particular spyware, but check the behaviour).
Extreme but a step in the right direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Crime costs even when it doesn't pay (Score:1, Interesting)
If (for a legitimate reason) you need to call someone on one of those islands, how are you going to whitelist this number? Do you have to register with name and address? Additional information?
You wouldn't be able to make an anonymous call anymore, because even public phones would have to be unblocked.
Of course, there's always the question 'Why would you want to make an anonymous call', but I feel that falls in the same category as 'If you have nothing to hide....'
Re:Is this the proper way? (Score:4, Interesting)
Impact on the dialers? Hardly. Cutting into the flow of money to the scammers? Maybe a little bit. Preventing a lot of unfortunate, computer-illiterate irishmen from raking up giant telephone bills? Sure thing.
And as far as I can understand the article, thats what it's all about - not to stop the scammers per se, but to prevent people from falling itno their trap. And as such, this is a Good Thing (tm) as far as I'm concerned.
You could try to educate Joe Avrage (or Ola Dunk, as we call him), but even if you should manage that - and it ain't gonna be easy - it's all in wain when their spouse, stipid kid or geratic grandmother just 'borrows' the PC for a bit and clicks on something they shouldn't have clicked on... back to square one. Blocking whole nations like this may seem extrem, but it works. If you have a legitimate reason to call there, simply call the telco and ask them to put that number on the whitelist.
A simular sceme - allthought user-initiated - are in place in Norway. You can ask that your phone shouldn't be allowed to call abroad, except to numbers you spesifificly designates. Or you can tell TeleNor (the biggest telco in Norway) that your phone isn 't supposed to call abroad, unless you dieal a spesific code first. I had to have a collegue set that one up, since his wife was (still is, despite countless attempts at teaching her) in the habit of clicking 'yes' to everything on screen...
Re:What's the scam ? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the other good thing about ADSL - I don't have to worry about shit like this. No (traditional) modem, no way it can dial out. Good job too, as in the past I've had to clean a handful of the little buggers off my girlfriend's PC.
Sucks to be caught out by this sort of thing though - hope your brother gets/got the money back.
Not all education (Score:1, Interesting)
It is very easy for you setting to be modified without knowing. Apparently most of these autodiallers disconnect a current session and reconnect without you realising, unless you have you modem sound turned on (and you might have you modem set up to auto re-dial if you get disconnected, which can be frequent with a crap service like Eircom).
I have seen this actually happen to a friends computer recently, before I heard about this, which I spent ages try to get rid of all the spyware etc off. His dial-up settings had been changed, which fortunately he noticed!
However his problem was that he kept getting virus/spyware alerts (as Norton warns you about TOO much), and a (stupid) friend of his told him to turn off the virus protection. He system was fried with crap as a result.
I agree with a previous statement that windows should alert that setting have been changed. OS X something similar by warning youthe very first time any application is launched.
Anyway, it is very easy for this to happen to you without you realising. Hopefully if you know about these things you will cop on very quickly, but not before you get a nasty phone bill.
Re:Duh! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Duh! (Score:4, Interesting)
That should read:
"..., please dial [random 3 digit code] now."
Re:What's the scam ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not looking likely... but tell your MS-using UK friends: BT will password protect premium numbers so they can't be used by a dialler.
J.
Re:What's the scam ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:White lists (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you are in NL and they activate SWITCHPOINT (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you live in the Netherlands and you have an evil big telco (KPN) that changes your DSL line into an electronic payment facility, with a risk of EUR 3.000 per incident. The technology they used is called 'Klipping' to link the IP number to the phone number of the DSL connection being used. No matter who has access to your machine (could be a remote connection with a stealth web proxy) payments can be made and will be automatically subscribed from your bank account.
This 'service' has been activated for all customers, without any notification at all, and with lies and cheats from KPN about the actual risks. For instance they clame that someone would have to literally dig up your phone line cable to abuse this system, which is a plain lie (wireless LANs, remote connections, etc.).
Sorry I am still a bit upset about all this.