New York state lawmakers are considering a new bill that would allow telephone companies and the state attorney general to sue modem hijackers: thieves who tap into your computer modem to make international telephone calls.
The bill was introduced in the state legislature April 4 and is believed to be the first in the United States to target the practice. Modem hijackers typically lure computer users to specific websites, sometimes through e-mail, that show them pop-up ads inviting them to click but which actually authorize software downloads that are accessed remotely by the thieves. The thieves are then able to charge international calls to the victims’ telephone bills.
“This is a new kind of thievery,” says New York state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Greenburgh), who co-authored the measure with state Sen. James Wright (R-Watertown). “and it takes new kinds of law to deal with them. It’s getting worse and it’s getting worse fast.”
"The practice of modem hijacking is a modern day form of piracy and cannot be tolerated,” said Wright in his own statement. “The enactment of this legislation would give dialup users as well as their service providers protection against such actions and allow them to recover lost costs. As technology grows and expands, as in the case on the Internet, it is important that our laws keep in step to make sure that consumers are protected. This proposed law does just that."
Brodsky doesn’t believe the bill is the first of its kind in the U.S., saying similar ideas are being mulled in other states, including Oregon, which is said to have a very similar bill in the works. Pam Greenberg of the National Conference of State Legislatures, however, says other states are considering the issue as parts of broader measures, while modem hijacking might also be investigated under some states’ computer trespass laws.
At least one telephone service provider, Verizon, is investigating customer complaints about the practice, saying you can fight modem hijacking by using dedicated telephone lines for computer dialup and blocking international calls to or from that line.
At least one Internet interest group has come out in support of the New York measure. "This is important legislation to target fraudsters who are cheating New Yorkers,” said Internet Commerce Coalition spokesman Jim Halpert, whose group’s members include America Online and AT&T, “and to give telecom companies who are stuck footing the bill a way to go after these bad actors."
