Local Internet users visiting pornographic sites in particular are reportedly still falling victim to fraud four months after being initially warned by The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) to carefully read disclosures before downloading material. \uffa0<\/P><\/p>\n
In early April, BTC advised all Internet users who do not have high-speed access like Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) about the dangers associated with downloading certain information from the Internet using a dial-up modem.<\/P><\/p>\n
BTC officials said they have discovered that some Internet users who download material that is usually of a promiscuous nature, are becoming victims of fraud. \uffa0<\/P><\/p>\n
Technical Manager at Micronet Business Technology, Greg Pinder, pointed out that when connecting to such sites, users are billed for international telephone calls.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93If you go to those sites it attaches a program to your computer,\uff92 Mr. Pinder said. \uff93This program then initiates a phone call from your computer to their site, so in essence the Internet is used to establish the connection but after the Internet is disconnected, it would use your phone line to dial out into that company\uffb4s site.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93It\uffb4s a program running on your computer that is using your telephone line to dial out, initiating a call from your end to a provider in the states, unbeknown to the user.\uff92<\/P><\/p>\n
The DSL is a broadband connection that is high speed whereas the dial-up is a much slower connection that is used with a phone line.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93You wouldn\uffb4t see this fraud with a cable or DSL modem, but if you use a dial-up, you\uffb4re susceptible to this type of thing,\uff92 Mr. Pinder said. \uffa0<\/P><\/p>\n
Manager of Management Information Services at Metro Labs, Benjamin Fox, added that persons need to become knowledgeable about certain sites before making an agreement or downloading any information.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93Do not be very quick to click \uff91okay\uffb4 or \uff91yes\uffb4 to certain programs that pop up,\uff92 Mr. Fox said. \uff93What will happen is, if you click on it, it makes an agreement.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93Once a person goes looking for certain images, movies or music, in some cases when he or she clicks on \uff91okay,\uffb4 a dial is installed and places a long distance call to that particular server in the world. \uffa0Once that is done, that\uffb4s where they incur that international call.\uff92<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr. Pinder suggested that local Internet users avoid visiting promiscuous sites so that they would not fall victim to this kind of fraud.<\/P><\/p>\n
\uff93Stay away from those websites and they are mostly adult websites,\uff92 he said. \uff93The persons who are really complaining about it are those persons going to adult websites and sites that are giving away free music.\uff92<\/P><\/p>\n
In order to avoid Internet fraud, BTC officials are warning all Internet users to carefully read disclosures before downloading material, disconnect their telephone line from the computer\uffb4s modem if they have dial-up Internet Access and use BTC\uffb4s Subscriber Activated Call Blocking feature.<\/P><\/p>\n
Hadassah Hall, The Bahama Journal<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In order to avoid Internet fraud, BTC officials are warning all Internet users to carefully read disclosures before downloading material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}