Decline in modem hijacking of internet subscribers

Anjana SAMARASINGHE

TRCSL: Billing complaints arising out of disputing IDD calls terminated in Pacific Islands has declined Director of Legal Affairs of Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRC) P.R. Amarasiri said.

She said that this could happen to any telephone subscriber and operators need to be alert on the issue and inform their customers on safety measures, which they could adopt to avoid this.

These disputes arise out of an operation called Premium Rates Services (PRS) Fraud. "Modem hijacking" and "Internet dumping" are other terms used to describe similar operations. In short these are dial-up internet scams.

PRS is a term given to numbers that attract a high termination fee for providing some form of content. Certain websites mostly offering adult content or music downloads will install a software into the surfer's computer to facilitate the PRS Fraud when they are browsing.

This will download with or without user's knowledge and activate when the computer sits idle for a predetermined period of time. The software turns off the volume of the modem for silent operations and then repeatedly dials and cuts off preprogrammed fixed fee PRS numbers to form large number of calls.

Sometimes it dials preprogrammed duration based PRS numbers and keeps the line open for a long duration of time.

This also terminates the local ISP connection and dial an international call to an offshore ISP and re-establish the internet connection.

Customers will be unaware that they have incurred these charges until they get their next bill. Due to this some customers have had to pay Rs. 8000 or more for their monthly bills.

TRC had made arrangements to educate consumers regarding this issue when this was widely spread. Though there are no laws imposed to prevent these customers are advised to adopt safety measures she said.

There are ways and means of users protecting their computers against modem hijacking. These include proper management of security settings in the computer as well as installing proper anti- hijacking or anti- virus software acquired through their computer vendors.

Further, blocking the IDD facility whenever an IDD line is used for Internet access or connected to a modem would prevent any dumped software dialing out IDD numbers without the users knowledge.

However fixed line operators said that they just provide carriage services for the customers and the PRS provider for the transaction and operators should not be penalised for the issue.