A FAMILY is paying off a phone bill of hundreds of pounds after falling victim to an internet dial-up con.

When her monthly bill was around 16 times the usual sum, Sue Cracknell realised something was not right.

But even as she made enquiries with her phone company NTL, scamsters were continuing to remotely hack into her home computer at night and instruct it to call up premium phone line numbers as far away as Panama and Spain.

It left Sue and husband John with an £800 monthly phone bill. The normal bill would have been around £50 or £60.

Mrs Cracknell has been told the scamsters use "pop-up" adverts on the internet as a trick to gain remote access to home computers before instructing the machines to make constant calls to high-cost phone numbers during the night.

The scam works if a telephone line is connected to the computer.

An investigation has shown some of the calls were made under remote instruction to premium operators in Spain and Panama.

Mrs Cracknell's only chance of recouping the money is to pursue the premium line operators for a refund, but as they are overseas this looks unlikely to succeed.

She is warning others to be wary of falling into a similar trap.

"I did not know this was possible. A lot of people don't understand computers fully. There needs to be more information or a list about what people should and shouldn't do," she said. "I did not realise that I could use broadband internet with-out a telephone line connected.

"The companies need to give out more information."

The Cracknell's phone is no longer connected to the computer, but the family must still pay the £800 bill and have been negotiating with NTL to work out a payment schedule.

In a statement NTL said it took the issue of "diallers" very seriously and warned that a minority of pop-up ads that appear on the internet are malicious and call up premium numbers without the user's knowledge.

The company suggests installing a quality firewall to safeguard against the scamsters, or having call barring installed to prevent access to premium phone lines.

First published: December 21