Unexplained Phone Bill Charges

spyware? dialer?

[diggle]

A friend of mine has had an item on his phone bill for £17.
When he queried it, it turned out to be a premium phone number beginning 090996. He thinks he was on Kazaa at the time.
Is it possible that when he was downloading something, a programme took over and dialled this number?
Also, could it still be on his computer? Has this happened to anyone else?

[Crazy_Fool]

pr0n sites often use phone diallers because they simply can't get merchant accounts any more. you can click something totally innocently, nothing to do with pr0n, then all of a sudden you have zillions of pr0n site windows popping up with their special "you really must click the ok button to verify this and that" box which is really the "download our premium rate dialler" box.

in the frantic race to close the zillion windows before the wife comes in and throws a sh*tf*t, it's perfectly possible to accidentally hit the "ok" button ..... after which you find you're dialling in on the premium rate service .....

not seen it happen on kazaa, but the diallers are all over the place these days .....

[Shane]

diggle,

I recently got hit by Kazaa and the associated software (junkware). Didn't get a dialer but lots of spyware and trackingware.

If you want help getting rid of Kazaa and the asosciated junk sticky me.

..... Shane

[ikbenhet1]

Diggle, you can check this. go to Start->Setting->network & dial up connections. You should see a extra dialout icon with the name of the site that has charged yourr friend.

Check if that icon set to (standard) if so, he is using the number each time he connects throug a modem/isdn.
But i think it's a one time thing (pay per minute) , it's a very common billing method.

[linkshark]

Get spybot search and destroy -- checks for webdialers, as well as adware, scumware, etc....