July 21, 2002 -
FTC Attacks Internet "Cramming" -
WASHINGTON, A scam that targets small
businesses, religious organizations,
charities, and foundations across the
United States by "cramming" charges onto
their telephone bills for services that
were supposed to be free has been
temporarily shut down by a federal
District Court at the request of the
Federal Trade Commission.
According to the FTC, the defendants,
through their telemarketing operations,
called consumers touting the business
benefits of having an Internet presence
and offered to design and host an Internet
web site for a "free" 30-day trial period.
The FTC charged that the telemarketers
failed to disclose to consumers that,
unless consumers initiate the contact to
cancel the service, the defendants would
automatically begin charging consumers
monthly fees of $19.95 or $24.95.
Consumers were never told, the FTC's
complaint alleges, that these charges for
Internet-related services would be added
to their local phone bills. The agency
alleges that the scam has taken in more
that $9 million for services that were
never ordered. The FTC has asked the court
to issue a preliminary injunction to
prohibit the alleged deceptive practices
pending the outcome of a trial, and to
order an asset freeze against the
defendants to preserve funds for consumer
redress.
"These defendants were involved in a
big-league deception," said Jodie
Bernstein, Director of the FTC's Bureau of
Consumer Protection. "They threw consumers
a curve ball and expected to strike it
rich. But as consumers know full well,
cramming is scamming and now, the FTC has
asked the court to say the game is over."
This case represents the eighth FTC cases
involving "cramming" since March 1998. The
case was filed in conjunction with the
Office of the Attorney General of
Minnesota, which filed a separate action,
and the Wisconsin Department of
Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection
and Office of the Wisconsin Attorney
General, both of which assisted in this
case.
The FTC's complaint names as defendants:
WebValley, Inc., Profile National Business
Directory, Inc., and National Business
Directory, Inc., all based in Hopkins,
Minnesota; Protel Advantage, Inc., U.S.
Protel, Inc., both located in St. Paul.
The individuals named by the FTC are Satya
P. Garg, owner and president of WebValley,
and an owner of Profile, and National;
Blaine C. Christofferson, an officer of
U.S. Protel, and Scott D. Lee, president
of Protel Advantage.
According to the FTC complaint, consumers
who were not interested in receiving the
defendants' Internet-related services
believed that they could simply let the
trial period expire without taking
affirmative steps to cancel the services.
The complaint alleges that, once the trial
period expired, the defendants
automatically billed consumers on a
monthly basis via their telephone bills,
without authorization. In numerous
instances, according to the complaint,
consumers did not notice the unexpected
placement of the charges on their phone
bills and inadvertently paid the charges
for many months.
Further, the FTC charged that the
defendants, in numerous instances, told
consumers that they were legally obligated
to pay for Internet-related services
charged to consumers' phone bills, when in
fact, consumers were not legally obligated
to pay the charges because consumers never
authorized them.
In addition to requesting a preliminary
injunction, the FTC also has asked the
court to appoint a receiver to take over
the defendants' operations, and to
ultimately order a permanent injunction
and redress for consumers. In addition to
the law enforcement initiative, the FTC
has joined with the Small Business
Administration, the Council of Better
Business Bureaus, the American Chamber of
Commerce Executives, the Yellow Pages
Publishers Association and the National
Federation of Independent Businesses to
launch an education campaign.
The FTC's Business Alert, "Website Woes:
Avoiding Web Service Scams," highlights
some common web service scams and offers
tips on what small businesses can do to
protect themselves, including:
Know your rights
If you receive bills for services you
didn't order, don't pay. The law allows
you to treat unordered services as a gift.
Review your phone bills as soon as they
arrive. Be on the lookout for charges for
services you haven't ordered or authorized
Assign purchasing to designated staff. And
document all your purchases. Train your
staff in how to respond to
telemarketers...
July 15, 2002 -
More Linux PCs to hit Wal-Mart
shelves - By David
Becker, Special to ZDNet News,
Retail giant Wal-Mart has
expanded its experiment in
selling low-priced PCs running
the Linux operating system. The
retailer last week introduced
through its Web site a line of
PCs with the Mandrake version of
Linux pre-installed. Wal-Mart
began shaking up the PC industry
early this year by offering a
line of PCs assembled by
Microtel Computer Systems
without a operating system
installed. The retailer
subsequently began offering the
same PCs configured with Lindows,
a version of Linux tweaked to
allow it to run common Windows
applications. The move was seen
as a milestone for public
acceptance of Linux, frequently
criticized as too complex for
the average PC user to
negotiate...
July 17, 2002 -
Meet the Nigerian E-Mail Grifters - By Michelle Delio
WiredNews,
She's a widow, he's a high-ranking government official. They have fallen
on hard times and urgently request your assistance to get a large sum of
money out of Nigeria. They will reward you handsomely for your help.
Chances are you've seen something like that in your e-mail box. Perhaps
in a bored moment you've wondered who sends them and why they bother;
after all, no one could be gullible enough to buy into such an obvious
con game...
July 04, 2002 -
Court quarrel continues
- From The Economist Global
Agenda, A last-minute
reprieve has extended the UN
mission in Bosnia for another 12
days after a bitter quarrel
between the Bush administration
and its closest allies at the UN
Security Council over the newly
created international criminal
court. America is threatening to
veto all UN peacekeeping
missions. Finding a compromise
will not be easy. AP - THERE was
a collective sigh of relief at
the United Nations Security
Council after the United States
agreed to a second last-minute
temporary extension to the UN
mandate in Bosnia just hours
before it was due to expire on
Wednesday, July 3rd. And yet,
after weeks of wrangling,
prospects of a compromise before
the new deadline is reached on
July 15th do not look bright.
America is demanding that all UN
peacekeepers be given permanent
immunity to the jurisdiction of
the newly-created international
criminal court (ICC)...
July 08,
2002 -
Deep Link Foes Get Another Win
- By Michelle Delio, Wired News,
9:00 a.m. July 8, 2002 PDT,
Links may appear to be helpful
little bits of code that whisk site
visitors across the Web, but in
reality they are vampires that sneak
in uninvited and suck the life out
of other websites. That may seem a
bit extreme, but recent legal
rulings and the service terms of an
increasing number of websites
adamantly claim that links are
nothing more than tools used to
steal content, corrupt journalistic
ethics and wreak havoc with
corporate profits...
July 31,
2002 -
PC-powered mozzie-buster gets
upgrade - CNN.com,
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Thai computer
programmer behind a wildly popular
anti-mosquito software package has
upgraded his program to also repel
cockroaches and rats, the English
language Nation newspaper reports.
According to the daily, the original
free download proved so popular with
Thai and overseas Net surfers that
developer Saranyou Punyaratanabunbhu
decided to upgrade his software to
target other pests. The original
program, "Anti-mosquitoes." had more
than 50,000 downloads in the first
three days of its posting on the
Thaiware.com Web site...
July 05,
2002 -
Spam-Cramming Foils Vacationers
- By Michelle Delio, Wired News,
2:00 a.m. July 5, 2002 PDT,
Vacationers with a sudden yearning
to get away from it all are
discovering that cyberspace isn't an
easy place to escape. After making a
bold decision not to check e-mail
frequently or at all during
vacations, many find that when they
do log on again they are greeted by
a mailbox crammed with spam -- as
well as a message from their
Internet Service Provider informing
them that their account has reached
its allotted capacity and no further
e-mail will be delivered until the
box has been purged...
July 30,
2002 -
Heroes
of Flight 93 - NBC News, Astonishing new evidence about
how a group of Americans stopped a terrorist attack on Sept. 11 The
site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight 93 crashed. Jane
Pauley interviewed the author of a book about the final moments of the
flight. Watch the video of her report. There’s a spot in Pennsylvania
that is hallowed ground —the place where United Flight 93 came down on
Sept. 11, taking the lives of 33 passengers and a 7-member crew —
people who didn’t die as victims of a terrorist attack, but as the
heroes who thwarted it. There’s new evidence that it wasn’t a few, but
likely many of them, who not only rose to the occasion, but in a
variety of ways were actually prepared for it. Jane Pauley reports...
July
11, 2002 -
Aussie Gets Into Pickle With Spam - By Kim Griggs, WiredNews,
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Joey McNicol hates spam. He just never
thought he'd be sued for complaining about it. But in what's being
touted as a world first, McNicol is being sued by an alleged spammer
after he complained online...
July
10, 2002 -
How Bad Can a 'Dirty Bomb' Be? - By Noah Shachtman, WiredNews,
Science and military experts disagreed on Monday on the impact of a
radiological weapon, like the kind accused al-Qaida operative Abdullah
al Mujahir was allegedly plotting to explode. Some see only a
"minuscule" rise in cancer rates, while others predict that huge
sections of New York or Washington would become uninhabitable if such a
bomb were ever to go off...
July 07, 2002 -
File swappers expose themselves
- By Steven Musil, Special to
ZDNet News, Users of the
popular file-swapping program
Kazaa frequently expose personal
data to other network users by
mislabeling the files that can
be shared, according to research
released by HP Labs. The
research, which was published
Wednesday on Hewlett-Packard's
Web site, found that a
significant percentage of Kazaa
users have accidentally or
unknowingly designated private
files to be shared with everyone
who has access to the popular
Kazaa network...
July, 2002 -
The Technology Secrets of
Cocaine Inc. -
Colombian cartels have spent
billions of dollars to build one
of the world's most
sophisticated IT
infrastructures. It's helping
them smuggle more dope than ever
before. By Paul Kaihla, Business
2.0, On a rainy night eight
years ago in the Colombian city
of Cali, crack counter-narcotics
troops swarmed over the first
floor of a low-rise condominium
complex in an upscale
neighborhood. They found no
drugs or guns. But what they did
find sent shudders through law
enforcement and intelligence
circles around the world...
