Beware stealth IDD charges from porn sites

By H. Amir Khalid
November 16, 2004

Kuala Lumpur - Those, ahem, adult-entertainment sites that you or certain poorly-supervised members of your family sometimes enjoy surfing to could wind up costing you a pretty penny, warns TM Net Sdn Bhd chief executive Datuk Baharum Salleh.

Instead of the normal one-sen per minute for Internet access and 1.5sen for the connect time, you might be inadvertently racking up international direct-dial (IDD) charges for calls to an island somewhere in the South Pacific -- to the tune of hundreds or even thousands of ringgit per month.

Until recently, Telekom Malaysia Bhd -- TM Net's parent company and the dominant fixed-line operator in Malaysia -- has been receiving 20 or so consumer complaints a month disputing IDD call charges, according to Baharum.

But since July, it has received some 7,000 such complaints, ranging from RM100 or so to RM4,000 in one case.

He said the difference could be attributed to dialling software knowingly or unknowingly downloaded by Internet users.

Baharum said these diallers switched an Internet user’s connection from the local dialup link (via telephone numbers 1511 or 1515) to a direct-dial connection to a server outside Malaysia.

Usually, when the user surfs to a pornographic site, he would be shown a teaser page and invited to enter the site proper to view its offerings. When the user clicks on a button to enter the site, he would then be asked to install the dialler.

He might sometimes be shown a legal statement advising that he was agreeing to be connected to the server via an IDD call, often at a premium rate.

Or the dialler might surreptitiously install itself to his computer and disconnect the local Internet connection, Baharum said.

Either way, it would then make a direct-dial connection to the overseas server, which was often located in an island nation in the South Pacific, such as Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu or the Norfolk Islands.

Baharum noted that the problem manifested itself almost entirely with pornographic websites, and would most likely not be restricted to users of any one local Internet service provider or browser.

Broadband users were not directly affected by this problem, but Baharum warned that the diallers could also disconnect broadband modems that many subscribers used along with dialup modems.

Many broadband users have a dialup connection as a backup for their broadband connection.

As an Internet service provider, TM Net had no control over where it subscribers surfed, and in any case Malaysia had a policy of no Internet censorship, Baharum said.

He urged parents to take all precautions to supervise their children’s Internet usage.

Among the precautions he recommended were keeping family computers in open areas of the home rather than in bedrooms, using filtering software to keep out undesirable Internet content, and ensuring that passwords were not shared outside the family.

Also, instead of using an “exit” button provided by these pages, he advised using the Alt-F4 key combination to shut down the window to ensure no user information was passed to such websites.

He also urged users to reset their dialup connections every time they got on the Internet to ensure the local dialup connection was not being bypassed.

Telekom Malaysia senior vice-president for sales at TM Retail, Datuk Mohamad Taib Hassan, said that his company would examine each of the 7,000 or so cases of disputed charges individually, before deciding whether or not to insist on payment.

But Mohamad Taib noted that in principle, telephone users were responsible for charges incurred on their lines.

And as a party to IDD settlement arrangements with its counterparts abroad, who expected payment for completed IDD calls regardless of their nature, Telekom Malaysia could not simply forgive these charges on its own, he added.

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