Porn victims paid back

Two Canadian porn sites have agreed to repay tens of thousands of dollars tricked out of web users in a dastardly internet scam.

The two companies, Virtualynx Internet Inc. and 583 665 B.C. Ltd, have settled government charges amounting to more than $26,000 in defrauded funds which the US government will return to the victims.

The companies had used an old trick - covertly disconnecting a user's dial-up connection and causing it to reconnect to a number in Africa or South America at rates of around $7 per minute.

The porn sites would have been entitled to a percentage of the money made from the connection.

Visitors to the sites were duped into downloading a piece of software which would connect to the premium rate numbers, in the belief that they were getting access to pornographic material without the need to pay for it by credit card or cheque.

The sites run by the rogue companies were plastered with ads reading: "No credit card? No check? No problem!"

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which reached an agreement with the companies this week, said that victims were unaware of the technical trickery until they received phone bills rocketing into the hundreds of dollars.

The FTC said that although users had to agree to a statement that mentions long-distance charges, it did not verify that the people requesting the adult material were the same as the people paying the bills.

The FTC ruled that this counted as deception.

In light of the ruling, the FTC advises web users to: be wary of any program that enables a modem to redial to the internet; cancel the connection and hang up if an alert appears on the computer indicating that it's dialling by itself; and to monitor children's internet use by checking the web browser history files and cache, as these are the most likely to be caught out.