Some adult Web sites have been taking visitors on a costly cyberjourney to such exotic places as Chad, in Africa - and it's been costing the unwitting visitors a small fortune, according to a news report.
ABC News says AT&T telephone customers complain about free porn sites - including www.sexnocard.com and www.nocreditcard.com - making money by cutting off their phones and reconnecting them to an Internet service provider in Africa at over seven dollars a minute.
AT&T spokesman Jeff Roberts told ABC the alleged scam appears to be legal because the porn sites in question have small disclaimers warning about re-routing for a fee, but few who enter the sites bother reading the disclaimers.
A quick visit by AVN On the Net to Sexnocard.com showed an otherwise nondescript site, with simple graphics and an image of a nude woman to the left, but clicking on "Get Instant Access" brought up a popup window, attributed to Nocreditcard.com and asking the user to pick their operating system and then click a "Get Connected" bar. From there, the user clicks to obtain a dialer program - which redirects their online connection to get the free material.
Once inside the site, the "Nocreditcard.com" attribution disappeared.
AVN On the Net was unable to reach Marketing International Consulting of Miami, which ABC listed as Sexnocard.com's administrators, while an attempt to call Nocreditcard.com through Celtline Holdings in Dublin, Ireland, brought about a disconnected number - the same result ABC said it got.
Roberts said this practice derives from a 1997 scam where Net surfers at a particular site installed software and were reconnected illegally to a Moldovan telephone exchange without warning. He also said that if Sexnocard.com and Nocreditcard.com are posting the disclaimers, it basically comes down to buyer beware. "Moldova was in fact a fraud situation where unbeknownst to you, a program was planted that would activate your computer when you weren't aware of it and open up your line," he told ABC. "(H)ere, it tells you what it's going to do - but you may not be paying attention."
Nocreditcard.com is said to be associated with E-Group, a firm promoting itself as a Net billing program charging on local telephone bills, with companies using the service said to make 25 cents for each minute a caller is hooked to the premium number, according to its website.
