In an effort to crackdown on auto-dialler programs, Ireland will block IDD calls to 13 countries. Auto-diallers change Internet users' dial-up settings to connect to premium-rate and International access numbers, sometimes without making the charges involved clear, or without requesting permission at all. Ireland's phone regulator, the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), has received complaints from over 300 victims of such scams this year, and it defends the action of blocking calls to the Cook Islands, Comoros, Diego Garcia, Kiribati, Mauritania, Norfolk Island, Nauru, Sao Tome and Principe, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia as "necessary to provide consumers with the protection they need".
Representatives of some of the countries affected are planning to lobby the Irish Government in Dublin, but ComReg says it is compiling a list of "legitimate" phone numbers that will not be blocked.