Irked customers alleged they feel duped when their telephone bills shoot up to thousands when they have in reality hardly made any international calls.

And the dismaying fact is that the bills show that calls have been made to destinations that one has not even heard about.

The case in point is that of Mohan. T. a private firm employee, who had to cough up amounts to the tune of Dh1500 for international calls made by unknown sources through his internet.

"I got a SMS message from Etisalat notifying me that that they have disconnected by international dial up, and that I have to clear by bills immediately. I was in for the worst surprise when I was told that my bill for the month amounted to Dh1,693," said Mohan who claimed that he had actually made only three calls to India.

"When I requested for a detailed bill, it was found that over 12 calls have been made in just two days (15th and 16th of this month) to a place called St. Thome & Prino. When I tried to explain, the answer I got was that the bills showed that those calls had gone from my internet and so I had no option but to pay," complained Mohan.

According to him, the Etisalat has also notified him that another amount of over Dh1000 was already pending in his account.

"I understood that somebody is misusing my line and hence I disconnected the international dial up immediately. Otherwise imagine, bills will pile up and if I don't pay, I will be taken to the court," said Mohan.

Yet another customer who does not wish to be named noted that he too had a similar experience when he left his internet line open for a few hours. " There were calls made to some strange destinations and I immediately realised that my line had been bugged by somebody. I also had to pay the bill as there was no other option," he remarked.

A technical expert who requested anonymity opined that the numerous pop ups that appear on the computer screens could be getting downloaded into the system allowing some distant source to access your internet or telephone lines.

Some Etisalat customers blame the service provider for not taking effective action to protect the interest of their customers. "Etisalat should do something as regards blocking the so-called pop-ups and cookies that create such a problem," said one angry customer.

"There is no point in washing their hands off this problem as more and more of their customers are falling prey to this scam. They are the service providers and they have the responsibility," he added.