To Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor, Cook Island and Burkina Faso

Since last summer, Armentel has been presenting a number of customers with bills reaching hundreds of thousands of drams against alleged long-distance conversations with residents of African countries and island states in the Atlantic Ocean, lasting for hours on end. The customers insist that they have had nothing to do with those places, but as time goes by, the list of countries grows more and more exotic, and the zeroes at the end of the totals increase as well. The customer complaint department at Armentel has told the subscribers that they have Internet connections and are accessing sites with games or erotic content, and that is the cause of the problem.

The Court of First Instance in Kanaker-Zeytun is currently hearing the case of Sirush Harutyunyan vs. Armentel. The plaintiff has demanded that a bill of 301,000 Armenian drams be considered void, because all she had done was avail of a dial-up Internet connection provided by Xternet (from October 2 to 10), but as a result allegedly ended up making calls to Great Britain and Guinea Bissau.

There are dozens of customers who have not yet gone to court. They claim that they were completely unaware of any international phone calls. According to an account prepared by Armentel, Gohar Smbatyan continuously made calls to Austria, as a result of which she received a telephone bill for 610,704 AMD (approximately US $1,400). Herikznaz Harutyunyan received a bill for 40,551 AMD (US $90) bill for August 2005 347,243 AMD (US $770) for October. "I was told that I had supposedly made calls to 26 different numbers in Austria, 12 different numbers in East Timor and 6 different numbers in Great Britain, all with one month, and 9-10 times a day at that," Harutyunyan said. Another customer, pensioner Suren Melikbekyan received a 140,000 AMD bill for international calls. "It turns out that I am Armentel's 'sexiest' customer, because I was told at the Armentel customer complaint department that I have accessed erotic sites through the Internet," Melikbekyan explained. In order to repay his debt and not lose his phone number, he requested permission to pay off 5,000 AMD a month, but was rejected. Two Indian students living in Armenia, feel are guilty of having unknowingly made calls to Estonia, Central Africa, and Austria totaling nearly 1 million drams. Similarly, Hayk Stepanyan has been asked to pay 390,000 AMD, and Naira Ohanyan's debt constitutes 875,000 AMD.

Armentel's demands remain the same - the company refuses to cancel the debts, although the citizens in question claim that they had previously never even heard the names of many of those island states.

What really happened?

Gohar Smbatyan wrote Armentel a letter in September 2005 demanding an explanation for her bill. The department of internet services replied, "...studies showed that the number dialed is a coded number (82089060700) for a commercial, erotic, or game site registered in the Internet, and the connection was established through the computer. Even a single visit to such a site is enough for the number to be registered and stored in the computer's memory, and, whether the user wants to or not, the computer then makes automatic calls to this number, which are then recorded as international calls. Armentel is not responsible for phone calls made to these numbers. The bill is subject to payment." Thus, according to official information provided by Armentel, customers using an Internet connection receive bills with large fees for international calls when they visit sites with games, erotic content or similar types of entertainment. Visitors to such sites are offered programs or phone numbers which promise entertaining videos or a faster connection. As a result, international phone calls are made unwittingly, against which large fees are then demanded from the customers.

Armentel offered a similar explanation in court. Their representative claimed the case is groundless, explaining that it was all the result of conscious and unconscious actions by the plaintiff. The result is that customers must pay for a service that they never used.

According to information technology expert Hrach Bayadyan, such programs really do exist, and they can appear on computers as a result of a user's actions or carelessness, after which they make international calls without the user's knowledge or wishes.

Don't fall victim to telephone scams

Armentel posted a warning in this regard after the court case commenced, on January 4 of this year, on its site at www.armentel.am. According to Hasmik Chutilyan, public relations director for Armentel, a warning regarding this problem was published in 2004 in the Hayastani Hanrapetutyun and Azg daily newspapers. So the company was aware of this threat a long time ago. But none of the customers were aware of the warnings in the newspapers. Of course, each customer is responsible for the security of their own computer, but service providers are obliged to issue warnings about such threats, propose tools against it, undertake preventive measures, warn customers in their offices about the threat of automatic international calls, and so on. Yet no additional information was given out for the simple reason that unprepared customers meant additional profits for the company.

Armentel has used a "better late than never" approach, proposing that customers put a code on the international dialing property of the lines they use for dial-up internet access, never press "OK" if it is not clear as to what is being agreed to, immediately cancel dialing if it starts automatically, and ensure that the modem's volume is raised to catch the specific sounds signifying that a call is being made. If this happens, the modem should be disconnected, even if it requires removing the phone line. Such dangerous programs are usually not detected by anti-virus applications. These programs are also capable of passing information about data stored in the computer, and not just making international calls. Removing such programs on one's own can be quite complicated, and special programs have been written especially for this purpose. Armentel has endorsed the SpyRemover program provided by the InfoWorks Technology Company (www.itcompany.com).