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FAQ
Welcome to the Frequently Asked Questions section. In this section, you will find answers to many common questions dealing with local, long-distance, and Internet services.
Question: What is cramming?
Answer: Cramming is the unscrupulous and illegal practice of placing charges for unauthorized services on a consumer's telephone bill. These charges, which usually appear as a monthly fee, can be for a variety of services including paging service, voice mail, long distance calling cards, personal 800 numbers, 900 number membership clubs, psychic help services, etc. Typically, charges for these services range from less than $5 per month to more than $50 and have sometimes gone unnoticed on a person's telephone bill for several months.
To avoid cramming, follow the steps below:
- Review your telephone bill carefully each month. If any charges or company names that are unfamiliar to you appear on your bill, call your local telephone company and request an explanation of your bill.
- Be aware when signing up for special promotions. Carefully read all forms and promotional materials including the fine print when signing up for telephone services.
- Do not divulge personal information, such as telephone, credit card or Social Security numbers on sweepstakes or raffle tickets. Telephone related services are sometimes offered to consumers in solicitations which include other offers of free products, discount coupons or savings travel packages. In accepting these offers,consumers are often unaware that they will be billed for services they did not authorize.
- Keep a record of the telephone services you have authorized and used, including calls placed to 900 numbers and other types of information services.
- Do not accept collect calls from unfamiliar persons.
- Beware of faxes, e-mail, voice mail and pages requesting a return call to an unfamiliar number.
For more information, visit here.
Question: What is slamming?
Answer: Slamming occurs when your telephone company is changed to another company without your permission. Most consumers and small businesses that are slammed do not realize it until they get their next telephone bill. Slamming happens to many consumers and small businesses in many ways. It used to be limited to long distance service. But as competition expands to local toll and local service, slamming is expanding as well. Some consumers and small businesses have had their long distance and local toll service slammed at the same time! To learn more about slamming, read the NCL's Slamming Tip Sheet or visit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Question: What is splashing?
Answer: Suppose you place a call from city A to city B using an AOS based in city C. The call is considered to be "splashed" if the billing for the call is based on the distance between city C (AOS) and city B (destination) rather than between cities A and B as one traditionally expects such calls to be billed. Thus, if the splashed distance (C-B) is much longer than the origin-destination (A-B) distance, the customer may be charged extra money. Of course, if the AOS city is close to the called party's location, the charges could be less than what might be normally expected. In any case, splashing causes a distortion of the normal long distance rates. Splashing in the United States is illegal according to the Federal Telephone Operator Consumer Service Improvement Act.
Source: CLEC Resource
Question: What is an AOS?
Answer: AOS is short for Alternate Operator Service. That is a company other than a long distance carrier or local telephone company that provides operator assisted services for long distance (collect, third number billed calls, person-to-person, etc.). Normally this involves having operator staff handle billing and the necessary dialing, but the AOS companies make use of existing long distance services rather than have their own network. Using an AOS, whether for a collect call or credit card call, can be more expensive than bargained for.
Source: CLEC Resource
Question: How can I avoid telemarketing scams?
Answer: Telemarketing fraud robs consumers of approximately $40 billion every year. The Federal Trade Commission has passed a new regulation
aimed at stopping telemarketing scams. Below is just one example of an actual telemarketing scam.
"A Laurel man received a call from a telemarketer who offered him gifts and then asked him to renew a magazine subscription. The man agreed and
gave the caller his checking account routing number. When the caller told him the renewal would cost $300, the consumer told the telemarketer not to withdraw the money from his account. Nevertheless, his next bank statement showed a withdrawal of $300. The man contacted the Consumer Protection Division and the company agreed to refund the money."
To learn more about telemarketing scams, and how to protect yourself against them, go here.
Question: Why do movies often use 555-XXXX numbers?
Answer: The use of a number that exists for an actual service can cause problems if listed in a movie or broadcast program. Audiences will attempt to dial the number out of curiosity. In the United States and Canada, 555-xxxx numbers are generally used for Directory Assistance (though a few exceptions exist for 800 and 900 service, and occasionally for business services). Thus, phone companies will recommend 555-xxxx numbers other than the 555.1212 directory assistance number. Dialing such numbers usually results in a phone company recording or the directory assistance. Recently, 555 numbers have been assigned to various services. An example of this is the 555.1313 "Name That Number" facility introduced in some areas of Canada. There is supposedly a block of inactive 555 numbers that is still reserved for use in movies and television shows. Theoretically, 555 numbers could represent valid service numbers outside North America, especially for those countries having 7-digit local number formats.
Source: Network Professionals Resource Center
Question: What are LATAs?
Answer: LATA (local access and transport area) is a term in the U.S. for a geographic area covered by one or more local telephone companies, which are legally referred to as local exchange carriers (LECs). A connection between two local exchanges within the LATA is referred to as intraLATA. A connection between a carrier in one LATA to a carrier in another LATA is referred to as interLATA. InterLATA is long-distance service. The current rules for permitting a company to provide intraLATA or interLATA service (or both) are based on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Visit WhatIs.Com to learn more.
Question: What is the Internet, and how does it work?
Answer: The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). It was conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. government in 1969 and was first known as the ARPANet. The original aim was to create a network that would allow users of a research computer at one university to be able to "talk to" research computers at other universities. A side benefit of ARPANet's design was that, because messages could be routed or rerouted in more than one direction, the network could continue to function even if parts of it were destroyed in the event of a military attack or other disaster. Visit WhatIs.Com to learn more.
Question: Who runs the Internet?
Answer: The Internet is a public collaboration. No one person, organization, or group of organizations owns it. It grew from a relatively small network of four computers used in research for the United States defense establishment into a public system comprised of hundreds of commercial telecommunication networks of all sizes, thousands of institutions, hundreds of thousands of businesses, and at least 30 million individual users. Who really runs it and keeps it going? Visit WhatIs.Com to learn more.
Question: What is e-mail?
Answer: E-mail is short for "electronic mail." It has always been the most popular use of the Internet. In the U.S., more e-mail is now exchanged than postal mail. E-mail is simply sending and receiving notes to and from and other people, using your computer and the electronic paths that connect them. Because e-mail "letters" or notes travel at electronic speed, people sometimes refer to the traditional postal system as "snail mail." Visit WhatIs.Com to learn more.
Question: What are cookies?
Answer: A cookie is a special text file that a Web site puts on your hard disk so that it can remember something about you at a later time. Typically, a cookie records your preferences when using a particular site. Using the Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), each request for a Web page is independent of all other requests. For this reason, the Web page server has no memory of what pages it has sent to a user previously or anything about your previous visits. A cookie is a mechanism that allows the server to store its own file about a user on the user's own computer. The file is stored in a subdirectory of the browser directory (for example, as a subdirectory under the Netscape directory). The cookie subdirectory will contain a cookie file for each Web site you've been to that uses cookies. Visit WhatIs.Com to learn more.
Question: What is Java?
Answer: Java is a programming language expressly designed for use in the distributed environment of the Internet. It was designed to have the "look and feel" of the C++ language, but it is simpler to use than C++ and enforces a completely object-oriented view of programming. Java can be used to create complete applications that may run on a single computer or be distributed among servers and clients in a network. It can also be used to build small application modules or applets for use as part of a Web page. Applets make it possible for a Web page user to interact with the page. Visit WhatIs.Com to learn more.
Question: What is spamming?
Answer: Spamming is when a person(s) sends unsolicitied bulk e-mail to thousands of individuals and/or newsgroups. The use and abuse of spamming is spreading rapidly, and many Internet users are complaining loudly about the very negative effects it has on them. To learn more about spamming, visit the Internet Mail Consortium (IMC).
Question: What is E-Commerce?
Answer: E-Commerce is what happens when you combine the broad reach of the Internet with the vast resources of traditional information technology systems. It uses the Web to bring together customers, vendors, and suppliers in ways never before possible. E-Commerce is here and presents abundant opportunities. Companies around the world already buy and sell over the Internet. They connect with customers, suppliers and each other. They do business on the web, and consequently, they do more business. There are challenges like security, scalability and reliability. They are real, but they are surmountable. E-Commerce is about web-enabling your core business processes to improve customer service, reduce cycle time, get more results from limited resources, and actually sell things. To learn more about E-Commerce, go here.
Question: Is cyber-shopping safe?
Answer: E-Commerce is what happens when you combine the broad reach of the Internet with the vast resources of traditional information technology systems. It uses the Web to bring together customers, vendors, and suppliers in ways never before possible. E-Commerce is here and presents abundant opportunities. Companies around the world already buy and sell over the Internet. They connect with customers, suppliers and each other. They do business on the web, and consequently, they do more business. There are challenges like security, scalability and reliability. They are real, but they are surmountable. E-Commerce is about web-enabling your core business processes to improve customer service, reduce cycle time, get more results from limited resources, and actually sell things. To learn more about E-Commerce, go here.
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