Sri Lanka 13-nation phone ban
p2p news / p2pnet: Sri Lanka Telecom says it’ll appeal an order to ban international calls to 13 South Pacific island nations.
The ban was called to stop ‘modem hijacking’ and Net porn scams, “after complaints that subscribers were billed for long-distance calls they never made,” says AFX News.
The Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tokelau, Western Samoa and Kiribati are among nations being blocked.
“There are 34 international gateways and only we have been targeted for this action of the TRC (Telecommunications Regulatory Commission),” AFX has a Sri Lanka Telecom spokesman saying. “We plan to appeal against this and we are already working on it.’
Last year, Ireland blocked direct dial phone calls to 13 countries because of auto-dialling fraud or modem hijacking. Among them were the Cook Islands, Solomon Islands and other small countries, mostly in the South Pacific.
And this year, New York state introduced what may have been the first US bill aimed at halting modem hi-jacks.
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See:-
AFX News – Sri Lanka Telecom protests govt order to cut links to Pacific island nations , October 31, 2005
auto-dialling fraud – Ireland modem hijack fraud, September 22, 2004
modem hi-jacks – New York modem hi-jack bill, April 5, 2005
October 31st, 2005 at 6:40 pm
Countries or providers that refuse to kick spamvertised websites, spammers, or spyware producers off the net or deal with spam zombies should have their access blocked by other countries or the other countries should not prosecute when angry users retaliate.
October 31st, 2005 at 9:33 pm
and who may I ask still uses a dial up modem?
November 1st, 2005 at 5:56 pm
A lot of people still do. High speed anything isn’t available in a good number of areas outside municipalities in the USA.