Porn surfers go to Chad, plus a bonus story from the land of Duh!
Telephone subscribers have been complaining about “free” porn Web sites that make their money by disconnecting Net users’ phones and reconnecting them to an Internet provider in Africa at up to $7.31 a minute. According to a telephone company spokesman, the scam is apparently legal, because the sites have small-type disclaimers warning that porn-hungry viewers may be rerouted for a fee.
The sites ask users to download a dialer program that, when launched, redirects their internet connection in exchange for viewing the ‘free’ porn. What they’re doing, unfortunately, is perfectly legal. Read the fine print….
The scamsters learned their trick from a 1997 incident in which internet users visiting a certain web site and installing a piece of software were reconnected to a phone number in Moldova. That case was, in fact, fraud because you were not told what was happening, not even in fine print.
Experts have said that foreign governments sometimes make deals with companies running psychic hotlines, sex chat lines, or other premium phone services, in order to receive a portion of the revenue from the service.
Story from the land of Duh!
A new internet business was created by Equinix as the “Fort Knox” (Fort Knot) of the internet. The building is located in a nondescript section of San Jose. The reporters who were brought in were required to sign a nondisclosure agreement regarding the building they were going to see: As part of the building’s security they could not disclose where the building was located. The next day the San Francisco Chronicle printed the address of the building, as well as a picture. It seems the building was tracked down over the Internet through it’s business license. Duh!
