Ireland bans Internet to beat fraudsters
23 September 2004
Ireland is to block direct dial phone calls to 13 other countries following an Internet scam costing users thousands of pounds.
The fraud secretly diverts Internet users' log-on connections to foreign and highly-expensive numbers.
So-called modem hi-jacking has led to Ireland suspending calls to those countries found to be at the bottom of the majority of complaints, including the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands and Mauritania.
Chairman of regulator ComReg explained: “In [the] interests of consumers ComReg is forced to take some unusual and exceptional measures.”
The new con is an Internet modification of the old “rogue dialler” trick, where members of the public were enticed to ring expensive, premium-rate numbers to claim prizes which did not exist.
However, with the current version, Internet users are not usually aware of the fraud until they receive their phone bill.
One company ran up a bill of nearly 12,200 euros (£8,360) before discovering it had been a victim of the fraudsters.
Legitimate calls to any of the barred countries will now require a special request from the caller to do so.
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