Direct Dial To Porn-Dialler Area Codes To Be Blocked

BrianD

And why shouldn't they be! These islands have nothing else to do apart from tourism. Tuvalu sold off its .tv domain name other s have hosted adult entertainment services. Some have suffered years of colonialism so I doubt if they are too bothered about how the calls come to be routed to their destination.

BTW Ripwave there is nothing factually incorrect in my posting if you read either ComRegs paper or the The Enquirer article. Because the telco's say and ComReg "understands" (a compromise statement if I ever read one) they can't do it, does not mean it is necessarily a matter of fact. I would be of the view and I'm sure many others that a default block with the facility for subscribers to unbarr numbers upon request should be technically possible.

spongebob

BrianD wrote:

I doubt if they are too bothered about how the calls come to be routed to their destination.

Indeed Brian That would be why we have had to regulate for them as we in Ireland (and in other countries) are the ones who are being defrauded in this instance and not the locals. We are as free to mitigate the consequences of their revenue generating activities as they are to tolerate them .

By analogy, many owners of substandard shipping register the ships with countries that do not regulate them with regard to safety and seaworthiness. Consequently EU countries frequently have to step in with additional regulations to keep these rustbuckets out of our waters , despite their being legal in the Panamas and Liberias that register them.

M

Ripwave

BrianD wrote:

BTW Ripwave there is nothing factually incorrect in my posting if you read either ComRegs paper or the The Enquirer article. Because the telco's say and ComReg "understands" (a compromise statement if I ever read one) they can't do it, does not mean it is necessarily a matter of fact. I would be of the view and I'm sure many others that a default block with the facility for subscribers to unbarr numbers upon request should be technically possible.

Brian, the isssue has nothing to do with technical viability. Comreg is asking the providers to use a "whitelist" facility, so that any given number only has to be unblocked by a single subscriber (per provider). It is deliberately taking this approach to minimise the inconvenience to users, while providing the maximum protection from rogue diallers. The actual directive (as against the supporting document) doesn't legally require the use of this whitelist, but it's extremely unlikely that a provider will go to the additional trouble and expense of making it even harder for their customers to call these countries unless the whitelisting approach fails, and providers end up paying for large number of "unauthorised" calls.

Comreg wrote:

ComReg is aware that the direction will initially and briefly inconvenience legitimate consumers who wish to call some of the destinations in Annex B. However, these consumers can opt-in to call these destinations by contacting their telecoms provider. Once the number has been unblocked for one consumer, it is unblocked for all consumers. In advance of the direction coming into force, operators should create a “white list” of numbers i.e. based on existing traffic profiles any legitimate numbers currently in use after examination should remain open once the customer has been contacted and stated their desire for the numbers to remain open.

(If you'd actually bothered to read the qhole Comreg document, instead of "selectively quoting" from it in a way that you object to others doing, this would be pretty obvious. There is absolutely nothing in the document to support your interpretation of the phrase "Comreg understands").

oscarBravo

BrianD wrote:

No it wasn't as I was referring to the posted article and not the actual directive that you later quoted. I have made no factual errors - you have.

You misinterpreted the quoted article, and didn't seek clarification in the document to which it refers. That's a factual error. Care to point out where I made one?

BrianD wrote:

Anyway, Oscar you may have the last word if you wish.

I don't want the last word here; I want you to admit that you're wrong about this issue, and better yet explain the agenda that compels you to defend the indefensible.

Oh, and you can call me Paul.

BrianD

Sorry Paul, I won't admit I'm wrong because I simply am not. There is nothing off the mark that I have stated in my postings. In fact my initial posting was questioning a line in the article. However, with your selective word-by-word-out-of-context analysis of postings I suspect I will never be right.

You are defending the indefensible! If PC users took responsibility for managing and securing their equipment we would not have this issue. Already, the Band 13 countries are creating a stir in the paper about the highly questionable blockade (a "naval blockade" of the 21st century?) proposed by ComReg. Scammers will always be there. Take control of your PC and the charges of Band 13 countries and auto diallers are imaterial. Fact.

Ripwave

BrianD wrote:

Take control of your PC and the charges of Band 13 countries and auto diallers are imaterial. Fact.

"I'm all right, Jack" - it's written on the Celtic Tigers family crest!

dahamsta

I hate dragging this out, but I want to tackle the mantra Brian keeps throwing at us, since it's a core of his argument and no-one else seems to want to tackle him on it:

Brian, the simple fact of that matter is that the PC has become commoditised, and at this stage the people that actually understand what they do and how they do it are very much in the minority. Most of these people genuinely don't know the difference between a web address and an email address[1], so to expect them to understand complex problems like security is simply asking too much.

Yes, consumer firewalls are relatively easy to run, but they still befuddle most users. They also find it very hard to understand why they need a firewall and a virus scanner, and why they can still be infected via other routes when they have all these things. And they can't understand why they can't do some things they want to because of all this junk that complicates and slows their computer.

So you can argue that it's the responsibility of the user all you want, but when you get right down to it it's just not a responsibility that they can handle. Security is now the remit of the hardware and software makers, it's up to them to build these tools into their systems by default in a completely unobtrusive way. That's simply not happening now, but watch: it will.

You probably think that it's unfortunate that all of these dummies are on the Internet, and in some ways it is, and quite quite maddening at times. But it's extremely fortunate in other ways, such as the fact you and I can buy computers a lot cheaper, and charge these dumbasses loads of money when their computers "break".

Learn to accept it Brian. Embrace and extend, as the man that carries a very large amount of responsibility in all of this, would say.

adam


[1] If you run a website with a registration system, you'll have seen plenty of bounces from addresses like www.gubnet.com@yahoo.irc. No, non-webmasters, I'm not kidding.

maxheadroom

BrianD - picture the following scenario if you will:

You've just paid your credit card bill. Lets assume you've got a fairly high credit limit, and that you get a bill every 2 months instead of every month.

You go out for a meal and pay with your credit card. Unknown to you, your card is cloned by your waiter.

The information is passed to a crime syndicate, who now have fradulent access to your credit card details. Over the next 2 months, they rack up hundreds (or thousands) of euro of unauthorised charges.

Should you have to pay the bill?

If not, why not?

eircomtribunal

BrianD wrote:

Already, the Band 13 countries are creating a stir in the paper about the highly questionable blockade (a "naval blockade" of the 21st century?) proposed by ComReg.

I found the "stir" in the media – even the article in the German SPIEGEL, I posted earlier in this thread had a reference to it – about Comreg's decision "interesting".
Eircom are going to loose millions (I'd love to find out the amounts they made from their Band 13), so will the Telcos who've taken "care" of the Pacific Island countries, albeit they only got a fraction of the dosh.
Who made the Island governments act? I would not be astonished if Eircom had been active in the background.
It's also a nice decoy from the question of Eircom's part and profits in this racket.

P.

spongebob

eircomtribunal wrote:

It's also a nice decoy from the question of Eircom's part and profits in this racket.

€1m a month.Not sure if this was profit or turnover on band 13 though.

David Mc Redmond is lending a few of these countries his pad as a temporary embassy no doubt.

M

dahamsta

ComReg calms auto-dialler storm
Friday, September 24 2004
by Deirdre McArdle

ComReg has moved to reassure South-Pacific states that legitimate calls to these destinations will not be affected by proposed measures against auto-dialler programmes.

Auto-dialler programmes have plagued Irish phone users since the beginning of the year. The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) has received some 300 phones calls from consumers regarding excessive charges arising from dialler programmes, with costs incurred reaching EUR2,000 in some cases. But new guidelines from ComReg should help to minimise the threat of auto-diallers to Irish consumers.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will be obliged to keep their consumers informed about free or low-cost solutions that eliminate the dialler programme from PCs and block it from re-installing itself at a later date.

[...]

.....................

billy the squid

You probably think that it's unfortunate that all of these dummies are on the Internet, and in some ways it is, and quite quite maddening at times. But it's extremely fortunate in other ways, such as the fact you and I can buy computers a lot cheaper, and charge these dumbasses loads of money when their computers "break".

using peoples lack of computer knowledge to rip them off, how is that different to what the porn diallers are doing

dahamsta

billy the squid wrote:

using peoples lack of computer knowledge to rip them off, how is that different to what the porn diallers are doing

*HUMOUR