My boyfriend and I were billed 135.54 for supposed Web access to a porn site. Neither one of us visited this site. We don't even have long distance calling, and at the time, the content settings on our computer were set to zero for nudity, sex, etc.
It's interesting how the bill was sent the day after "services were rendered" and the due date is only one week from the billing date. This short time frame and the threat of collection agencies would scare many people into paying without checking into the situation.
My boyfriend called their customer service number where he was on hold for 20 to 30 minutes before getting a real person. Another way to get many people to give in and pay. The representative asked him if he could get to his computer while they were speaking. He said he was calling from somewhere else. (Who knows what they were going to try to pull.) He told the rep. No one was home at the time on the bill, and she responded by saying someone must have broken into our house and used our computer! She also said they were just a billing company for other companies and joked about why anyone would want to bother accessing porn on the internet!
She then told him to go to their web site (establinshing a connection between our computer and theirs) to the customer support page and to also mail a certified letter stating why he thought he shouldn't pay the bill. She also said she would block the account. I took my chances and went to their web site. There was a button you could use to block your account which I pressed, but afterward this action was still available, so I don't think it does anything at all.
After all of this I did a search on their business name and found this site with all these reports on them! I also found a news article reporting that the city hall of a town in Oklahoma was billed $400 plus. Anyway, I did a lot of looking around and found several things on the computer. They hack into your computer while you are online and install a mini dialer and a small executable program. Then the mini dialer calls the porn site and a bill is generated to you. They find your phone number on your computer.in our case, they must have used phone company records, because our phone bill is mailed to a diferent address and that is where Alyon sent theirs.
Listed below is what I found and what actions I took. Some of this info can be found in other usacomplaints.com.
First, go to your Dial-up Network Folder and delete the mini-dialer, Then using Find from the Start menu, locate the file "iedisco. Exe" and delete it. I took these steps, then used Find to locate all files modified or created at the time and date of the bill. You will see the words "Alyon", "invisibol" and "access dialer" in several file names. The files they placed on my computer were all in a folder named "Egroup" in the Windows Folder. I copied these onto a floppy for future reference, if needed, then deleted them from the computer.
In one of the subfolders there was an icon I recognized as popping up on my desktop while I was downloading some items from the Internet. At the time I thought it was part of one of those programs and deleted it as it was just a shortcut. (I have since checked those programs and they seem to be Okay.) In addition a toolbar appeared at the bottom of my desktop around the same time. I deleted it then also because it didn't seem to do anything. It had a minmize button and 2 others (I don't remember their names). I'm sure this was also Alyon's.
I did a print screen of all their file names located by the Find feature and saved them as a Word document. As I stated above, I also copied all those files onto floppies. I sent Alyon a certified, return receipt letter, being careful to include all information they require as stated on their invoice. I also gave a detailed explanation as to why we were not resposible for the bill and told them I had done some research on them and knew what they were up to.
DOCUMENT everything and above all DO NOT PAY them if you indeed did't access their site!
Good luck to all of you other victims! If everyone reports this company we can stop them.
Gena
Carbondale, Illinois
U.S.A.
0 comments