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06-September-2010
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Dialers - The risk
You probably have already heard stories of the son or daughter of someone that made a call to those premium rate numbers and then got a huge bill to pay. Less common is to discover that similar situations occur on the web. Instead of being the result of a call made by the youngest to a number he shouldn’t, someone has managed to install on our system without our knowledge or consent a program that did that call or simply because we allowed then to. The general lack of knowledge of this kind of situations, is do to the reasons why people connect to the web. They do it to satisfy diverse but specific needs, and those rarely are to seek forms of protection or to search information regarding the threats they are expose to while surfing the web.
What’s a dialler?
Dialers are small programs that make phone connections. You probably had to start one or more programs to connect to MastersHelp and read this article, one of them has the dialer.
What problems do dialers have then?
Normally this type of programs is downloaded to our computer with our consent and good faith, because we were lead to believe on the advertisement made by the web site which tells us we need that dialler and that it’s completely free. Fully trusting that advertisement, the careless user will then install the dialer. Most dialers are use by adult content and games web sites, and we haven’t noticed it still, and the bill is making its way to our home.
If it’s a fact that you need to make a phone call to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) it’s also a fact that one can make calls to different places than the ISP. And threat lies on that possibility. "What if when you visited website X, it dialled a international premium number without your consent? If you're thinking: "I would notice it," why not instead think, "How could I avoid this happening in the first place?
If it's true that it takes a person with knowledge about how the Internet works, its faults, the bugs which the applications used to access it have, it’s acceptable to think that this is a very rare situation. The truth is that most cases are due to careless users that will authorize, download and run the dialer.
How can we avoid it?
There are anti-dialers programs on the market. These programs will intercept connection attempts made by our modem and check if the dialled number has your permission or not.. You can use one of these solutions so avoid trouble. An example, is the CheckDialer program, "which is free and can be a precious wallet friend, that if you are using a Windows operating system.
Surfing carefully is another possible solution. Before believing the advertisement that stats the software you must download is free, think a little. Do you know the people responsible for the web site? Are they trust worthy?? Why do you need the installation of that program? Why? And if even then you decide to install this kind of software, then your good eye on the phone bill at all times.
Being a pal is also a form of stopping dialers, so report to your ISP when ever you came across a web site what installed dialer without your consent, they probably can help you find the authorities that deal why this kind of situations.
Not being a security expert, I do expect although that I managed to make you understand this other danger you might came across while surfing the web. Protecting your computer is up to you. Feel completely free to place any comment on this article.
by André Ferreira in 2004-06-26
Translated by André Ferreira and Thomas Fletcher