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(C)1999-2000 WEB110 All rights reserved
Editorial Supervisor :Tracker Dog Yossie
This page was translated by TAC |
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(since 99.7.5) today /yesterday |
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This page had first established on July 5, 1999.
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News Release 1.The FTC and the New York Attorney General allege that Crescent and its principals have violated the FTC Act and New York state law. For Release: August 23, 2000 http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/08/crescent.htm2. per our(WEB110 and UNIBANKO) investigation, the head office of VISA and MASTER CARD has delete almost of the above merchant's account. 3. Law firm which represents Multimedia Forum, Inc.and The Crescent Publishing Group Inc.,send us a complaint on December 3, 1999. as follows;
From: "*****, J."<*****@lawable.com>
Dear Sirs: RE: Mutlimedia Forum, Inc. and The Crescent
Publishing Group Inc., et al. Our law firm represents Multimedia Forum, Inc., The Crescent Publishing Group Inc. and a number of other companies listed as merchants on your website at WWW.WEB110.COM/sousa/file02e.shtml. Our clients have noted the material regarding credit card billing posted at the internet website WWW.WEB110.COM/sousa/file02e.shtml. Your company is listed as the registrant of WEB110.COM at the Registry for .COM domain names, Network Solutions, Inc., and we hold you responsible for the material on this website. Our clients conduct legitimate businesses and we object to your assertions that our clients improperly impose credit card charges on visitors to their internet websites. Your comments damage our clients' reputation and goodwill and cause harm to their businesses in Japan, the United States and other countries. We request that you immediately remove from your document all references to our clients, as well as all references to our clients' internet websites, and to all the merchants you list on your website. The following websites referred to by you should be deleted, namely: WEBSITES Please confirm, in writing, that you have made the requested amendments. In the event the material at your website is not amended as requested within five (5) days from the date of this letter, our clients reserve their rights to take appropriate legal action to redress the situation. Sincerely, ***** W. ***** ABELMAN, FRAYNE
& SCHWAB URGENT!
1）What these cases are all about "OBSESSION Cases", so named by WEB110. Theses are cases of unfair billings made by those running some adult sites. They pretend to offer free services and ask people to visit their homepage and then to input their credit card numbers "just to verify the visitor's age". Most part of them have no other contents, nor offer any other services. Yet they charge such visitors an expensive membership fee every month. OBSESSION refers to the representative of these adult sites, (http://www.obsession.com), run by a firm called LEXITRANS, Inc. The firm unjustly gathers credit card numbers using the e-commerce store name listed above and have many credit card number input pages. WEB110, around March 1999, received few reports of troubles involving a store named WEB_CLUB and requests for investigation. Then around this May, we received one report after another telling us of mysterious billings from WEB MAGAZINE. Then around this June the store names that did such billings changed their names to INTERNET CLUB, GRISETTE, GREYDOVE, etc., yet the billings were done to the same credit cards. After our detailed investigation, we've found out that those billings were all done for using the sites of this OBSESSION Group. As of May this year, WEB110 found at least 20 sites that seemed to be run by LEXITRANS, Inc. And we suppose the number of such sites are still growing. We are afraid that we simply are not able to determine the exact number. If you want to see the real workings of one such site, access http://www.obsession.com/international/freelove/index.html. If you try to close this page with JavaScript ON, you will see the various group sites appearing one after another. Yet none of those sites have anything but a top page and a page for credit card number input. Also, those pages say, "ENTER FREE", "Your card WILL NOT BE BILLED", and "You need to input your credit card number to prove you are of legal age." Many of the victims have input their credit card numbers believing they will not be billed. Yet there are cases where they get no services provided -- they get no account issued, and see no evidence of the members' area (though the top page of each site shows an entrance for members). After you enter your credit card number, another credit card number input form of a related site appears. After all this, you receive a bill charging you for some US$50. You try to cancel the contract, yet you cannot easily find out how. When you call your credit card company, and they will answer, "With use on the Internet, you have to do the cancellation on your own. We have no right to stop the billing." If you are lucky and your credit card company agrees to do something for you, the investigation usually takes several months. Of course, during these several months, the billing keeps coming to you. Furthermore, this June we found cases where the billing amount increased to some US$60. What is more problematic is that there are victims who never inputted their credit card numbers into any of the OBSESSION Group's "free service" sites yet they have received billings. Usually, these cases would be considered as crimes committed by some third party people who have illegally used the victims` credit card numbers. Yet as the number of such cases are on the increase, and we have a growing suspicion that the OBSESSION Group themselves have made forged contracts, as in the N-BILL Case. (See Investigation File 01.) One thing questionable about the OBSESSION Group is that they often change their store names and do the billing several times every month. This makes it hard for the victims to find who to call for cancellation. Also, even after a contract with one store name is canceled, the victim soon gets a bill from another store name. In this way, there have been only a few cases settled by the victim's individual efforts. Many of the cases still remain unsettled. Even worse, we suppose there are not just a few victims who simply do not know what to do. With the situation being like this, we, WEB110, have received applications for our cancellation support service from 23 victims as of the end of June. At first, we, WEB110, were in the process of finding out whether those requests for investigation related to the OBSESSION cases had any elements of fraud. More precisely, we did sense the sites were somehow fraudulent, yet that time we had insufficient situation evidences and we were not able to make the cases public. The sites in question did receive cancellation requests and the victims did perform the cancellation procedures required by the sites. By May 26th, we finally found so many victims of these sites that we were convinced the sites deserved serious investigation. At that point, "Tracker Dog Yossie", chairperson of WEB110, asked all the staff of WEB110 to begin a special investigation of the OBSESSION cases. Thus we have begun the underground fight with the OBSESSION Group. About a month later, billings from this OBSESSION Group rapidly increased, as well as the number of its member store names. Several victims received as many as three unfair bills from different store names in a month. We sensed the need for urgent actions and decided to open this page in July 1999, in order to prevent further spread of these victims. We are aware that we have yet to collect enough evidences to proceed with some solid legal action. 2）What OBSESSION really is All of the credit card member store names listed in the beginning
seem to belong to a single organization, LEXITRANS, Inc. The representative
of their sites is OBSESSION.COM. This is proven by the fact that if
you send cancellation mail to the cancellation mail address displayed
in each of those sites, in many cases you receive a reply from Obsession
Customer Service (obs_custsvc@lexitrans.com).
Registrant: ANX TELCO, INC. Shown below are all the URLs of the top pages of the adult sites which we assume is run by LEXITRANS, Inc. (based on our investigation performed in late May)
http://www.adulttalk.com/ There might be some other sites than the ones listed above, as they change and are updated very often. Usually, the only accessible pages of these sites are the top and the free membership registration pages. Only a few of those sites clearly state that unless one cancels the free membership within 48 hours of registration, the free membership automatically changes into charged membership. Besides, many of the sites have no information about who runs them and no links are given to a page describing the membership regulations. Even if one gets to access the membership regulation page, in most cases the site offers no information concerning the automatic change of free membership into charged membership. The membership fees shown in the sites used to be US$44 to US$49.99,and they were raised to approximately US$60 in late June. There were cases where the actual amounts billed being raised earlier than this. Some were charged from early June onwards. The instructions show [custsvc@(site name).com] as the inquiry address, yet all the replies were sent from [@lexitrans.com]. This suggests all the inquiries are transferred to LEXITRANS, Inc. We searched the domain of the sites listed above, and found some registration information common to many of them. Besides that of ANX TELCO, Inc. listed above, the information is as follows. (as uncovered by our research performed in late May) MULTIMEDIA FORUM,INC. and CRESCENT PUBLISHING
DYNAMIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS and PERSONALS
CLEAR COMMAND TELECOMM, INC. Note: Obviously, the Fax No., 999-999-9999, is non-existent. Also notice that the contact addresses contain no individual names. These information seem to change quite often. Shown below are the names displayed at the sites as the operators running them. These names also appear as those of the credit card member stores that do the billing. These too, however, often change. ADULT INTERNET / ADULT MAG / INTERNET CLUB / INTERNET MAGAZINE / MAGAZINE FREE / ONLINE CLUB / ONLINE MAG / PHOCAS INC / WEB CLUB / WEB MAGAZINE Some of the store names listed in the beginning do not appear in the list above. With such store names, we used the accompanying [****.COM] to access [htt@://www.****.com] and found out those names too were related to some of the adult sites of the OBSESSION Group.
3）How the credit card numbers leaked? (a hypothesis) Those sites might at first sight seem to be just flagrant sites which
deceive the users into typing their credit card numbers into them. Yet
we, WEB110, have made the following three hypotheses. Hypothesis 2: They generate valid credit card numbers with a "credit card number generator" *1 and bill all such numbers. Hypothesis 3: A third party made a bad use of the sites with a credit card number generator. Out of the three, the hypothesis that makes us most anxious is Hypothesis 2. If OBSESSION Group was trying to do illegal billings using a credit card number generator, how would they run the operations? 1. To cope with possible complaints, they would prepare an entrance
page, though only nominal. (In fact, there is a membership regulations
page with no link to any other page.)
What made us suspect the use of a credit card generator? Among the people who reported to WEB110, we had a woman who said she had never used her credit card over the Internet. We have some other evidences for this suspicion. On receiving a bill from the OBSESSION Group, we called them for cancellation.
Then, all the telephone operator asked was our credit card number. Without
telling the entire number, the cancellation cannot be accepted, said
the operator. They do not even issue member accounts (user names, passwords) to those who have entered and sent their credit card numbers for membership. They have no intention to provide any services. All they care about is the credit card numbers. They have no reason to care about their customers' (victims') contact addresses and personal information. On the contrary, having such information might cause suspicions. Since they have no information about their victims except for their credit card numbers, no wonder they cannot cancel any membership unless the member gives them his/her whole credit card number. Since they can make up non-existent sales using credit card numbers
alone, all they need to have are valid credit card numbers. If they
were billing only those numbers entered from their Web sites without
using a credit card number generator, they should at least have some
information about the Web sites where the submissions (applications)
were made, the involved remote hosts, time when submissions were made,etc.
We have asked them for such information several times so far, yet have
received no reply. *1) *2) 4)Victims worldwide We have an evidence the victims of the OBSESSION Group are not limited to Japanese nationals alone. Another adult site, named "OBSESSIONS", seems to be often mistaken for OBSESSION and have received a great number of protests and inquiries from victims of unfair billings from OBSESSION. They have set up a homepage telling where those protests really should go. http://www.obsessions.com/billing.html The homepage says, "I --- feel that they are completely wrong for operating the way they are!!!"
The names of the credit card member stores OBSESSION Group has used for billings has changed, in this order, WEBMAGAZINE --> WEBCLUB --> PLINY *LUSTHIGHWAY --> greydove *grey.com -->GRISETTE --> DAEDALUS *XDAE.COM --> ARACHNE *XARAN.COM --> SPLIT BACK,I*SXBI.COM --> STRAY BACK,I*YYSB.COM --> INTERNETCLUB --> BIRD N BEE,I*YBIRD.COM --> USSENORA.INC. In case of the victims who were deceived into membership of OBSESSION.COM, the representative site, the store names have changed WEB_CLUB (March to April, 1999) --> ,WEB MAGAZINE (Around May) --> ,INTERNET CLUB (around June). We can easily imagine why they change their store names so often and why they use more than a single name at the same time. a) They are trying to confuse the victims and the credit card companies, so they may not be found out that the billings are done by the same organization. b) An international credit card company, even if they find some accidents involving the card they run, usually have an obligation to investigate only for two to three months prior to the incident. Furthermore, such a company seldom investigates the relationships between billings done under different names (member store names). c) Unless they receive a large number of reports of victimization by a single entity, the U.S. public institutions will not begin prosecution procedures. If you see a billing from any of the stores listed above has disappeared
and a billing from a new name instead, please contact: 6）What you should do if you receive a bill. Call your credit card company and tell them that you have received an unjust bill. They might transfer your call to the section in charge or ask you to call another number. Anyway, tell the person in charge of unjust billings that you have never heard of the name on the bill, or that you entered your card number because the site said "ENTER FREE", yet you have received no service. Then, ask him/her for the following procedures. The above does not hold true if you
entered your card number out of your own will and have received some
service. a)Refuse the payment. b)Ask them to stop payments. c)Ask for a charge
back. d)Invalidate your
current credit card number and get a new card issued. If you are dissatisfied with the way your credit card company handles the problem, you could withdraw from the membership for complete safety. Yet for getting a charge back, it might be better for you to retain your membership. Tell your credit card company that this might be a large scale credit card fraud case with someone using a credit card generator software, and that ignoring this could lead to more victims. If they refuse to pay you the charge back or mishandle your complaints, we here allow you to tell them about this investigation file and send them a printout of this. In the N-BILL case, this worked in many cases, according to many reports we received. （Warning）
7）Send a protest and questions to OBSESSION Group (We have provided the mail formats.) After asking your credit card company to stop payments, send mail to OBSESSION Group to inquire what is going on out there. Be sure to save and print out your mail after transmitting it. Keep the printout. You will probably get no reply from them. If you do, they will probably not answer your questions. That is no problem. The printout you keep will serve as an evidence that there is a problem with OBSESSION (an evidence to prove that the site in question does not have membership entrance records or that the site does not do any management of its members). * In the mail format given here, we have used WEB_CLUB as the name of the credit card member store that did the billing. If you got a bill from any other OBSESSION store name, type in the appropriate name instead.
If you receive a reply, please send it to Tracker Dog Yossie, ------Warning------ --------Request------- Thank you for your cooperation. To those of you who cooperate, we will send mail of new important information whenever available. 8）Send a report and a request for pay back and stoppage of transactions with the site About a week after sending the protest mail described at 7) above, send a facsimile to your credit card company together with printouts of your protest mail and this "OBSESSION Case" files as well as the reply from the site, if any. Send these via fax or conventional mail. The address/fax number and the section in charge should be listed in a monthly bill of brochure from the credit card company.
9）Cases reported from victims We will publish reports from victims of the OBSESSION-related sites. As you will see, the handling of the matter differs from one credit card company to another. We hope these reports will be of some help to you.
10）If you are not a victim, you can still help us If you know of anyone suffering from unjust billings from the OBSESSION-related sites, please tell him/her about this page. Also, put up a notice of this page in any of the computer network notice boards you know. Thank you for your cooperation. [WEB110, Investigation File 02, OBSESSION Cases] 11）Request to credit card companies We would like to hear your opinions concerning the OBSESSION cases, because these might be cases of "large scale, indiscriminate fraud", which are beyond the control of individuals. We hope you will give a warning of the cases to all your card holders. Send us your opinions, questions, and information concerning the OBSESSION
cases to the address below. 12）Explain Your Problem to FTC We also suggest you use the FTC's complaint form. They usually act when they receive many complaints.
This page had first established on July 5, 1999. (C)1999 -2000 WEB110 All rights reserved This page was translated by TAC |