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Hamilton Spectator
Wondering
About a Phone Bill to Tuvalu?
July
27, 2004 -- Karen Cumming works in the communications business.
But
there is one communication the CH News reporter is certain
she did not make.
It
was a phone call last month from her Hamilton area home to
a place called Tuvalu, an island in the south Pacific.
It
turns out Cumming was a victim of so-called modem hijacking.
Somehow, a dialer program slipped into her home computer from
the internet. And the program made the call through
her modem, without her knowing.
"I
was horrified about this. I had no idea such a thing
could happen," she said. She doesn't remember clicking
into any pop-up menu, which is the usual way that internet
users unwillingly allow the dialer program to be uploaded
onto a computer.
Lucky
for her the telephone charge was only $15.00. And her
long distance company, Sprint, has agreed to credit her account.
But
lots of other people have been far less fortunate. They've
received bills for hundreds of dollars an in some cases up
to $1,500, say Hamilton lawyer David Thompson, who last week
brought forward a class action lawsuit on behalf of customers
of Bell long distance who have been victimized by the internet
scam.
The
plaintiff, Edith Carriere of Monetville, ON alleges in a statement
of claim that Bell knew or should have known since Jan 1,
2002, that calls to these far away places were part of an
internet scam.
She
received telephone bills for more that $1.000, which Bell
eventually reduced to $400.
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