A Warning on a Internet Scam

[Natasha K]

I'm not sure if you all know about this new internet scam or not so I thought I would tell you.

A couple of weeks back, me and my boyfriend recieved our phone bill only to see it had almost trebled in price. We soon found out that we had a dialler installed into our computer unknowingly by some people in the island of Sao Toma, off Africa, that connected to a premium rate dialler which meant every time we connected to the internet, we were connecting to this premium rate dialler.

It was an awful scam but luckily, we discovered it quite quickly and my boyfriend has installed a program called Adaware which seems to be preventing it.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned.

Best Wishes,

Natasha

[Bob99b]

Try downloading Spybot. Doesnt work as well as Lavasoft's Adware but it gets the job done.

[MrFancypants]

Diallers can be a real plague. I also use Spybot and AdAware just to be on the safe side.
Oh, and of course a virus-scanner + firewall.

[Natasha K]

I may sound very silly but I'm useless with computers but what is a firewall? Do you need to install it? I'm very sorry. Please excuse my ignorance.

Best Wishes,
Natasha

[Homer Gonerson]

it stops most hackers from getting into your computer... if you get something other than 56k (internet where you have to use a phone line to connect to the internet) you shouldn't have a problem with teh dialer thingy

[Jeff]

if you're using dsl, or a 2 way cable modem, you can safely remove your dialup modem from your pc or just unplug the phone line from it to prevent those dialers from working.

[L337]

yea that happend to my bro...it scared the hell out of him cuz it said 250 when it usally cost 40.

btw: love your avatar n0e.

[Natasha K]

It is indeed very worrying. We had a whole list of phone calls made to Sao Tome. It was only when I rung up an adviser that I found out what it really was. Luckily, I dont spend that much time on the internet so the phone bill wasn't too extreme but it was still over our usuall price.

Best Wishes,
Natasha

[s_Bop]

get cable that will def solve the problem!

[Mr. Matt]

Heh. OUCH! Don't worry, diallers aren't new internet scams. They've been hooking the un-aware for ages now. A firewall may help even more than an adware blocker/detector.

A friend of mine upgraded to broadband a while ago, and thought he was safe. But he'd never unplugged the 56k modem! He wanted it as a spare or something, in case his broadband ISP went down. Anyway, one day he heard this funny screaching noise while he was eating, and it was a dialler, using his 56k modem while he wasn't even there! He had a phone bill of hundreds, too...