Mr Tony Murray is the latest in a growing number of Irish consumers who have received a nasty surprise when they have opened their telephone bills.

He was billed €20 extra on each of his last two Eircom bills for calls made to Diego Garcia, a tiny island based in the Indian Ocean, which he was sure he hadn't dialled intentionally. After several scans of his computer using antivirus software he discovered that he was the target of "auto diallers" - a scam whereby fraudsters redirect a person's internet dial-up connection to far flung locations at massive cost.

There have been more than 300 frauds reported to the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) this year alone, several of which cost in excess of €12,000 to businesses.

A common type of auto-dialler fraud is perpetrated by fraudsters who lease telephone numbers from small remote nations that have high call charges from Europe and the US. They then set up rogue websites that secretly install software that changes the internet settings on computers to re-route the dial-up connection to the new premium numbers.

Fraudsters tend to use adult and music download websites to locate their software, which can often be installed without a prompt from a Windows system.

The fraud is a variation on the theme of spyware, whereby firms install rogue software onto your PC which can transmit information about your surfing habits.

Yet despite the increasing risk of auto-dialler frauds, individual consumers are almost always left shouldering the entire burden of the telephone bill by operators.

Mr Murray told ComReg he found Eircom "totally uncooperative when dealing with the problem" and another consumer who contacted The Irish Times from Northern Ireland this week is still fighting British Telecom over a bill of £700 from a fraud.

Mr David McRedmond, Eircom's commercial director, says it is often very difficult to tell what is a fraud and what isn't from auto diallers. Eircom acts like any other credit-card firm or bank in relation to these scams and has absolutely no desire to make a profit from it, he says.

But Eircom is far from alone in refusing to absorb the cost of "modem hijacking" and no telecoms firm in the Republic has yet agreed to bear the risk of the frauds for their own consumers.

In the absence of this type of consumer-protection measure being put in place by operators, ComReg has taken the controversial decision to ban direct dial calls to 13 states which it associates most with these frauds.

From October 4th consumers and businesses will not be able to make direct-dial calls to a host of South Pacific and African countries such as Diego Garcia and the Solomon and Cook Islands. The ban is the first of its kind introduced in the West, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and has provoked concern from the 13 states that it will now be replicated.

"Our first and foremost priority is to protect Irish consumers,"says Mr Mike Byrne, director of market operations at ComReg. "There may well be some initial inconvenience but within the directions there are various ways for consumers who want to do legitimate business with these countries to unblock numbers that they want to call."

Under ComReg's directions consumers can continue to make operator assisted calls or can apply to operators to get specific numbers unblocked in the countries. Their operator will attempt to determine if this particular number is legitimate or a fraud.

Mr Todd McClay, the Cook Islands ambassador to the European Union, says this type of "white list" regime is likely to be impractical because of the huge number of numbers involved.

There is also a concern in the states affected that people will simply not bother to do business with them if there is an additional barrier to ongoing trade.

"If other European countries follow suit with a ban it could kill off the economies of the Pacific Island within a matter of a few weeks," says Mr McClay, who will meet with ComReg later today as part of a delegation from the affected states to try to persuade ComReg to overturn its call ban planned for next week.

The delegation wants to suggest an alternative whereby all premium rate numbers that their states lease to outside parties could be banned. This approach has worked in a similar situation with a US telecoms firm, he says.

But the ban could also have legal implications in the future.

When asked if the 13 states would consider legal action against Ireland to prevent a ban, Mr McClay said they would have to consider every measure to avoid the replication of the direct dial ban in other jurisdictions.

Mr Byrne of ComReg says the regulator's advice is that their action is allowed within the framework of several international treaties. But he is also keen to point out that the ban on direct calls will be kept under review over the next six months and countries where frauds cease can then be taken off the banned list.

Mr Richard Hill, the ITU director responsible for policy on auto-dialler frauds, says it is not prima facie obvious what impact ComReg's ban has on international treaty obligations.

"The ITU is working on guidelines on the area at the moment and by the end of the month we should start trialling a system to help people respond to the frauds," he says. "The issue has only really become prominent over the last six months or do."

Irish telecoms firms are generally against an outright ban, in part because it could cost them revenue, but also because they may be forced to check thousands of numbers to see if they are legitimate. Some of the premium-rate lines operating in Ireland, particularly telephone chat and sex lines, use numbers leased from the 13 banned states.

Figures obtained by The Irish Times show that Eircom generates 859,561 minutes of business worth €2.25 million every year from the 13 states. Other companies such as Esat BT and MCI also carry significant traffic to the blacklisted destinations.

"Esat BT will be supporting ComReg's decision to implement a solution which provides the ultimate level of protection by stripping out all access to the listed countries," says Mr Bill Murphy, Esat BT chief executive. "But there are concerns that the decision puts a high degree of responsibility on the ISPs and telcos."

Eircom, MCI and NTL are more sceptical about ComReg's ban on calls with most believing the fraudsters will simply lease numbers from other parts of the world.

But ComReg says it is not for turning on the ban and points out that the controversy surrounding it has brought the issue of fraudulent auto diallers to the attention of consumers. It is also planning to review the direct-dial ban after six months of operation, it says.

Mr Stuart Norton, a partner in StopITnow - an Australian firm that develops software to protect PCs from auto diallers - says the frauds are a big problem in Australia which the government has so far failed to tackle effectively.

He says his firm recently started getting Irish business and is currently negotiating a distribution contract with a Waterford firm called Radius Technologies.

In fact, there is a range of software available to protect consumers from "modem hijacking".

Free downloads are available at the website www.spy-bot.com while other websites charge for their software: www.pestpatrol.com, www.noadwhere.net, www.stopdial.com.