Modem Hijacking

I wanted to give a heads up to those of you still on Dial Up.

I opened my most recent phone bill today, and was shocked at the cost of it. Normally I just look at the total and pay it, but this month I went through the statement to see how I could possibly have spent so much money - Good thing I did!

Imagine my shock at seeing 3 phone calls to a psychic hotline at a cost of $50.00 each..... I was floored. Imagine my further surpise to see that 2 of the calls were made while we were not even in the house. One was while we were both at work and children were at school, and the other was while we were on the road to take our daughter to skating (I received a photo radar ticket in the mail to prove it!)

On calling my telephone company they explained that there has in fact been many recent reports of the same thing occurring, and I fell victim to this scam. My telephone company has informed me that I am responsible for the calls regardless because they were directly dialed from my home. I will be further pursuing this as I do not feel that I should be responsible for $150.00 dollars in calls that I have NOT made EVER.

If you are on dial up, please contact your telephone company and ask about putting a block on your line. I have now instituted this block at a cost of $3.95, and now no 900 calls will be made from my number unless the 8 digit password is input.

Protect yourselves and your pocket book.

Canuck

That is harsh dude

I've heard instances of where a computer has some sort of spyware that dials a 900 number that proves to be very COSTLY. Is this what happened to you?

In my last job, I dealt with children and the internet, and I had all kinds of parents come up and tell me about similar situations. Basically a pop up window comes up and they THINK they have clicked it close, but it really has installed some nasty stuff on your puter. Maybe a tip to avoid things like that would be instead of clicking the "x" in a window to close it, is to close it by right clicking it on the tray at the bottom of your screen and selecting it.

I hope you can get this all straightened out. If it is the same situation as the one I've heard about...you'll need it. None of the people I've talked to got out of paying for it. And here, we dont even have that much choice of switching to another phone/internet provider.

sk8tngcanuck:

What a harsh reality check! I was with a dial-up server for quite sometime, but it was free. I am now with Shaw cable, it's not free, but has no connection to my telephone.

That's outrageous. Even so, it's good to keep tabs on ones' phone company! Thanks for the warning!