What is Spyware?

Dialers

What are they?

Dialers are small programs that either change your dial-up Internet connection settings or dial-up to the Internet directly by themselves. They are usually classed as 'Trojans' due to the way they arrive on your computer and they pose a massive threat to people using dial-up internet connections.

What do they do?

After installation, they do one of two things. They either change the phone number that your computer dials to get access to the Internet from it's normal number (the one that your Internet Service Provider puts in for you) to a premium rate number instead, or they dial a premium rate number all by themselves using your modem. Either way, the user rarely knows that they have a dialer until they recieve their next phone bill, which can be hundreds or even thoudands of pounds due to the dialer calling the premium rate number for long periods of time.

Who uses them?

Dialers were originally invented as a way of paying for premium online content, such as downloading music or programs, without using a bank or credit card. The idea was that you would connect via the premium rate number for the duration of the download and then the web site would put your original number back for you to connect to the Internet at the normal cost. It proved moderately popular in the days before broadband, and lots of sites used dialers legitimately and responsibly.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for fraudsters to realise the potential of dialers! They started to write dialers that could 'sneak in' and dial up their premium rate numbers without you knowing. The fraudsters are almost always based abroad, meaning that it's very difficult to catch them or for phone companies to track them down and recover the money that they obtained illegally.

What's the risk to me and my PC?

It depends upon how you connect to the internet. People who use dial-up Internet connections are at a very high risk of falling victim to a dialler. People who use cable broadband connections are not at risk provinding that they don't still have their old dial-up cable attached to the phone line. People using ADSL broadband through their phone lines are not at risk at all since diallers cannot use an ADSL modem to dial up to a premium rate number.

How do I prevent / get rid of them?

Thankfully, the threat of dialers can be almost completely eliminated even for dial-up Internet users. The best way to protect yourself against diallers is to call your telephone provider and ask them to bar international premium rate phone calls. This means that even if you do get a dialer, it won't be able to dial out and consequently incur the huge charges to your phone bill.

Cable broadband and ADSL broadband users should make sure that their old dial-up Internet cable is not still attached to the telephone wall socket. That way even if you do get a dialer, it's physically impossible for it to dial out.

All of the major Anti-virus programs check for and remove diallers as well. Make sure that you have an Anti-virus program installed and active at all times and that you update it's virus definitions regularly.

 

 

 

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