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Ireland Cracks Down on Online Scammers
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."
I mean I can see that if it's just to make people pay when there's no need, it'd be a real pain where it hurts, but if it's to try and collect on that money (by setting up a high-cost line then using a virus/trojan to change the settings to dial it), there must be someone making money out of it. Surely it ought to be possible to track down by the payments ?
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
Physicists get Hadrons!
Lesson One. Be a European regulatory authority!
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.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
What about all those legitimate businesses that are dependent solely on Ireland for their existance? Seriously though, If more countries were like this, it would probably force the governments to crack down on scammers (or at least try to).
Wouldn't simply ensuring you have adequate virus/spyware protection help? This falls under awareness since people download things that do things totally differently than what they wanted. In extreme cases, you could remove the dialup modem and leave an Ethernet card for Internet access. In any case, blocking direct-dialing does seem too extreme.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
So what's going to stop owners of those numbers in foreign countries to send an email requesting that their number is whitelisted?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Try reading the article. This isn't a spam issue, it's a premium rate dialler issue. If they move operations in a big way, then Ireland can react in the same way. To be honest, I can't imagine the loss of Ireland will make them want to move...
There is zero legitimate usage to the South Seas islands. They have the distinction of being the most expensive places to call on the planet, with the single exception of calling a ship at sea. I used to work with fraud control of a major carrier, and nobody had ever ONCE seen a legitimate call to one of these places (Vanuatu, Niue Island, etc). It's all scams and phone sex.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why not just ban all premium rate dial up sites. They are just breeding grounds for porn sites and scams. I've yet to see a legitimate use for them. We could do without them.
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.
Philip
Signatures are broken
Does any spyware/anti-virus software check this (and I don't mean check for a piece of particular spyware, but check the behaviour).
Insightful ? . Note to Mod: RTFA it's not even about spamming, nor is the scam based in Ireland.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
It's a fairly good idea, all in all... It's kinda similar in certain respects to the way most firewalls are (or should be) configured; block all, allow selectively.
Clearly no company wants to cut into their profits, so I'm sure they very carefully analysed calls to the blocked areas over the last while, to see how many calls were made out to them. If they were used all the time by customers, they wouldn't consider it feasible to ban the entire selection.
It could be considered to be extreme, but it's certainly not any sort of censorship. They have said that they will compile a "white-list" of numbers in those territories, so if you have a legitimate reason to be calling those places, they are more than happy for you to do so. Again, just like configuring a firewall for the first time, it is a bit of a pain to allow all the things you need to, but you end up with a much more secure system.
99.9% of calls to these numbers are fraud. Ireland isn't stunting its telephone infrastructure in any meaningful way.
Think of this as cutting off an entire netblock for spamming. Either the guys on the other side do something about it, or their phones just stop ringing.
It was O2 (and perhaps others as well) who blocked this as there was a fault in the firmware of the most common Philips pay-as-you-go mobile (the one that was handed out free with a student Barclaycard) which meant you could call out for free. So while they fixed the problem by instituting a system at their end, they profiled all their pay-as-you-go calls, and barred calling to the countries bing called for the longest duration.
#include "disclaimer.h"
Atleast its finally showing a government willing to do something about it. You can't just educate people overnight to become IT experts and never get fooled again by some auto dialer. There will always be people who don't understand the system they are using. Education isn't a complete solution, the telephone regulators have to step in and do something. I would actually like to see a ban on the extreme premium rate calls completely (the ones that charge about 1000% the price of the call), but still allow the double the cost ones for TV programmes to make money in their competitions/polls like who wants to be a millionaire etc.
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...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Of course, you might still need to block some popular scam countries, if only to protect the citizens from running up not insignificant long distance time charges (and you certainly can't stop the telcos from charging from long distance time, but you can stop them from charging the extra fees that motivate this problem in the first place). If enough countries got around to saying flat out that we know this is a scam and we are going to legally protect our citizens from the "fees" they are being scammed out of, then eventually the problem would go away and there would be no need to block numbers. But as long as the government sides with the crooks and their telco accomplices and allows the telcos to go after the victim in this scam, the problem will not only continue but will grow; this article is the proof of that.
What little, if any, valid charges one incurrs while calling another party by long distance could certainly be covered by other and better means than allowing it to be directly billed to a telephone number (credit card, for example). Enforcing this would be far better than exposing all of your citizens to a scam based on a flawed telco business model and blocking whole countries from your long distance system.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing this type of billing go away completely, even for calls within a country. But at least there is a good argument that any scammers operating this way inside a country can be caught and taken to court; which is often not the case when they are on the other side of the globe. A few simple changes to the law, such as forcing the telcos to hold any payments for several innitial months to be sure victims have time to complain about scam sites and block those payments, should be adequate to stop hit and run scammers from seting up shop in the country they plan to run their scam in. And, of course, a law should block incoming international long distance telco "special fees", not just outgoing ones.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No I didnt RTFA, but it says they are banning direct dial calls, so if you want to ring someone in one of those countries, ring the International Operator first and ask to be connected. Duh!
Those bunch of muppets Eircom deliberately grouped the specific countries in question as "Pacific Islands" (even including one or two west African countries) in a certain tariff band. They then racked up the prices for this band. As it was merely international rate, not a premium rate (we have 15xx regulated premium nos.) people could not have it blocked.
My guess is the business that lost 12,000 and others complained to ComReg (the regulatory authority).
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
But thats impossible. Everybody knows there's no way not to annoy the Irish.
Not flamebait or a troll, I'm part Irish and just admitting the truth. Got a problem with that? You're just saying that to annoy me!!!
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
However, people will not "wake up" to a fact until it (A) impacts a large enough segment for the media to report on it or (B) impacts business enough to have them protect their infrastructure better and/or buy air/press time (see A above)
Government regulation is not the answer. It creates more red tape and toothless laws and raises taxes. Businesses (to include telcos, whether a state or private) should be innovative, not lobby the government to protect a broken system.
I doubt that this will have any impact on those dialers. What was the research done to determine that most of these dialers are infact dialing to South Pacific islands?
Of course it will. If the dialers can't dial these numbers the custoemr can't get ripped off.
Numerous complaints about these charges to Eircom (Our countries defacto telecomunications monopoly) have been ignored. Many customers have been left out of pocket. Thats why the usually toothless ComReg has taken action.
The best way, as a starter, would be to educate Joe average how harmful these dialers can be, and instead of going on blocking direct dialing to specific zones, wouldn't it also help much better if the user knew how to recognize, avoid, detect and eliminate such scams?
The people tha have been ripped off are generally not the tech savvy kind. They are not going to listen to this "education" anymore than they listen to traffic laws. Generally people will only care about it after they have been done over. These trojan dialers go to great lengths to conceal their presence.
See also Ireland offline for more info.
Band 13 includes those mentioned in the ComReg directive, and cost a whopping Eur 3.60 per minute (at all times). As a comparison, one reseller charges Eur 1.00 to the same desitnation, and the highest premium rate here is Eur 2.90.
So its reasonably clear that Band 13 was created to generate more profit for eircom, rather than protect their customer's interests. There are unsubstantiated rumours from "insiders" that eircom were making Eur 1m - Eur 1.5m profit a month.
If premium charges are racked up the user must physically type OK into a box before the dialer gets operative. That doesn't help too much if in addition to the dialer a troyan is sneaked into the computer that OK's it in a for the user transparent fashion.
In this case the number was shut down and the scamee mustn't pay.
In Switzerland dialers to premium numbers are outright verboten, since this year. Period.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I fixed a few machines with dialers on them for friends and family (I am also in Ireland). Some of them had phone bills of over 600 euros to these countries. I am happy they are doing this. It is a long time coming. I also heard about eircom collecting money to pay fraudsters. I am surprised they were allowed do this. The actual document by the way is here.. http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComR eg0499.pdf
Here are submissions from the various telcos.
http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComR eg0499a.zip
This means they could also sniff packets to their heart's content, stealing passwords as they go...
Eircom (Ireland's effective telecom monopoly) had picked the dialler countries out specifically and put them in a special 'Band 13' that was more expensive than anywhere else on the planet - 360.58c per minute, *three times* the next most expensive region. However these same countries could be dialled from for example Germany for as little as 37c/minute.
So likely Eircom were paying the foreign telco a relatively small amount for completing the call, and the foreign telco would pass on a percentage of that to the dialler operator, while Eircom itself was getting the lions share of the actual call costs. If you complained, they would basically say 'you shouldn't have been visiting porn sites then'.
It was in no way in Eircom's interest to see these scams ended, and that's why it was the government regulator that stepped in to force them to block the number.
See here for some more background information. (This guy's site is a parody of the ComReg site but the information he presents is true.)
*NEVER gona happen
On the other hand, if America (and maybe the E.U. too) passed a simple law stating that customers would not be responsiable for international long distance premium charges and that the government would no longer side with the telcos in giving them the weight of law to enforce these fees coming from a flawed business model against it's own citizens, then the problem would go away fast.
It might even go away faster if the government recognized that this was a well know fraud based on a flawed concept that the telcos set up and that the telcos take a cut from each time the scam gets a victim, and charged them with rackettering for letting the problem continue.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
;) For more information search on google for 'Klipping' and 'Switchpoint'.
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.
Freedom, jesus, Americans bandy that word around at the drop of a hat. Calls to those nations are now placed through an operator. Where's the loss of freedom? Minor loss of convenience is all.
The phone companies also blocked a number of countries. You can call a toll free number and
have the block lifted for free. It esentially stopped all the sacamming in one go. Those that need to do buisness with those countries presumably opened their lines shortly after (I presume that this is a very limited number of people), so the commercial impact was minimal, and the benefits maximal.
I believe that people who use any browser other than MSIE are either much less likely or incapable of having these dialers seripticiously loaded on their computers. The article said "previous efforts to raise awareness of the problem failed to significantly diminish complaints." Wouldn't it be more effective for Ireland to simply advertise the dangers of using MSIE?
The following was an email sent to all eircom customers(or at least everyone with a @eircom.net address
From: service.announcements@eircom.net
Dear Customer,
As part of our ongoing commitment to customer service we would like to
provide you with the following important information on Modem
Hi-Jacking.
Modem Hi-Jacking occurs when a web site you visit purposely disconnects
you from your Internet Service Provider and reconnects you to the
Internet through an international or premium rate number, which may
result in increased call charges.
Everyone using the Internet should be aware of this risk. It is a
global issue and is not confined to Ireland. eircom net provides a safe
surfing guide, which may help you reduce the risk of Modem Hi-Jacking.
Please be aware that there are also software and hardware solutions
available, which may reduce the risk of Modem Hi-Jacking. Our safe
surfing guide provides some examples of these solutions. These are
purely examples and do not represent an exhaustive list. eircom net is
not in a position to recommend a particular solution. Customers will
need to determine which one best suits their particular needs.
For further advice please visit our safe surfing guide at
http://www.eircom.net/safesurfing
Kind Regards,
Fintan Lawler
Managing Director, eircom net
This mail sounds a lot like eircom covering their own asses to me. They've regularly overcharged the numbers that dialers are calling, at over 3 a minute. I was almost caught by one of these dialer programs myself a few years back.
I logged off, left the PC to get something to eat, and then a very wierd sound started coming out of the modem. A big dialing +475 5746353735373 or something appeared on the status connection. Got freaked out at the time. Virus scanner couldn't find the dialer, so I had to desperatly altavista for an answer(didn't know about google yet). I fixed the issue but low and behold, the next bill had a big IR£3 charge for the number that the dialer connected to for about 20 seconds.
This scam has been know for a long time, radio stations are always on about it every few months. Maybe the guy on the inside got caught, because there HAD to be one unless eircom just enjoyed grossly overcharging customers. Oh well. Monopoly is as monopoly does. Still they're giving a free broadband trial now... Hmmm I wonder if I should NO CARRIER
May the Maths Be with you!
And they called us vigilantes ...!
the regulator is also compiling a "white list" of legitimate numbers that consumers have requested to call.
"Hello, is that Paddy? I'll give you 20 euros to try and call this number so that it gets added to the whitelist."
My sister in South Africa was caught with a whopping bill due to this scam. I wrote a long letter to Telkom, who eventually reimbursed part of her bill (but admitted no guilt on their part)
t ml:
t ml:
Interestingly, during my research I came across these links that indicated the diallers are actually developed in Dublin itself.
Seems like things are going full-circle here - Ireland is cutting lines to countries dialled by software developed in Ireland...
Shouldn't they start investigating the root cause?
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,36055,00.h
"...the company that makes and sells the dialers, in this case Dublin-based Nocreditcard.com, gets a good chunk of the profits..."
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,35627,00.h
"...The company behind Adultbuffet's dialer appears to be the No Credit Card Network, owned by Celtline Holdings based in Dublin, Ireland..."
It's only for six months, until they figure out something better.
Humans will be able to respond to this. Modem autodialers will not (at least not without a huge amount of added intelligence).
BTW: I'm patenting the process :-)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.