Look But Don't Click

The La Crosse Tribune reports a story entitled "Internet pop-ups lead to jacked-up phone bill":

Jeff Reikowski is dreading the arrival of his March phone bill. Over the past two months, he has been charged for more than $1,000 in international calls he didn't make, to a place he'd never heard of — Sao Tome.

He called the phone company to dispute the January bill. Several conversations later, about $800 in disputed charges for that month were dropped.

But he's still on the hook for more than $300, including taxes, for February calls to the same number in Sao Tome, which is the capital city of the Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, islands in the Gulf of Guinea on the west side of Africa.

Reikowski is apparently the victim of an Internet scam in which closing one of those pop-up ads actually downloads a program that captures the user's phone number and uses it to ring up very expensive calls.

There's probably a little more to this story than that. You should have set your Internet browser security to prompt for downloads and you should always click No. 'Nuff said.

Methinks that Jeff downloaded some special photo- or movie-viewing software, wink wink nudge nudge.

Still, although I report on them, I never click pop-up ads. Neither should you.

(Link seen on Fark.)