Watchdog/Premium Rate Dialler Hijackers
Discussion
Anyone else see the piece on Watchdog last night about Dial-up connection hijacking?
All these people running up massive phone bills because their PC's were dialling up Premium Rate connections, as somewhere along the line the user has clicked "Yes" on one of those Software Install pop-ups.
When they get the BT bill, and they are told that they have been connecting to "Porn Sites" but the users are adamant that they *have never been anywhere near sites like that*
Surely they must have been surfing somewhere off the angelic path to reach sites that try and install these hijackers in the first place?
One or two slipped halo's maybe?!
All these people running up massive phone bills because their PC's were dialling up Premium Rate connections, as somewhere along the line the user has clicked "Yes" on one of those Software Install pop-ups.
When they get the BT bill, and they are told that they have been connecting to "Porn Sites" but the users are adamant that they *have never been anywhere near sites like that*
Surely they must have been surfing somewhere off the angelic path to reach sites that try and install these hijackers in the first place?
One or two slipped halo's maybe?!
warmfuzzies said:
These usually come from Hack/crack sites that's how the bandwith bills get paid. Not just teh reserve of the Pr0n baron. So if you really want a serial no: or crack for a game, be careful out there its a big scary world...lol.
kevin.
That's what I mean!
Hardly wholesome family internet sites!
Especially the woman who said "I don't understand how it happened.... when I go on the internet with my son, we use sites like LetsRevise.com etc etc"
Yeah right.
Just tell me where your young son did get that advance copy of "Half Life 2" from?!
You don't need to ckick on anyting to get your PC infected with someitng nasty. I remember there was a test done at the height of the virus frenzy recently whereby an unprotected PC was diales up to the internet and just left there. Turns out it started being infected within 5 minutes.
agent006 said:
You don't need to ckick on anyting to get your PC infected with someitng nasty. I remember there was a test done at the height of the virus frenzy recently whereby an unprotected PC was diales up to the internet and just left there. Turns out it started being infected within 5 minutes.
Or 0.004 seconds if it dialed BT Internet
The only way to be infected by not doing anything is that Blaster virus.. that would infect Windows machines through a crappy microsoft bug, just like that. You simply connect to the internet and it can get in.
Truly, truly crap.
Fortunately it does little damage, but imagine if it did... A fair percentage of the world's win pcs could feasibly have had their hard disks wiped, at the very worst.
Truly, truly crap.
Fortunately it does little damage, but imagine if it did... A fair percentage of the world's win pcs could feasibly have had their hard disks wiped, at the very worst.
Pentoman said:
The only way to be infected by not doing anything is that Blaster virus.. that would infect Windows machines through a crappy microsoft bug, just like that. You simply connect to the internet and it can get in.
Truly, truly crap.
Fortunately it does little damage, but imagine if it did... A fair percentage of the world's win pcs could feasibly have had their hard disks wiped, at the very worst.
True, but that is covered in the Critical Updates of Windows Update.
I am also sick and tired of spending x pounds on a buggy OS and then x pounds more on AV, add-blockers and anti-spam etc. Things will change when Longhorn comes along - or so Microshot would have us believe.
Since most people have broad-band connections and are therefore permanently connected to the internet, I would like to see the ISP's doing a lot more for our money, as they should be responsible for blocking this crap, as it is possible for them to do that.
I also think that in time to come, they will start charging us for the priveledge, as everything seems to be going that way.
Before the internet came along, virus's were virtually unheard of, as was spam and adware.
As we pay for our connections, this SHOULD include protection against these things, don't you think? Sadly they don't see it that way... Things will change.
there is a new spam prevention technique in the pipeline, with servers refusing to pass on emails to the next unless a mathematical "puzzle" has been solved.. this doesn't take long per email so fine if you're a normal user but ties up your computer in knots if you're sending out millions as spammers do. They's have to spend shedloads more on processing power to continue, which makes the economics of spam just not worth it. Don't know how far away this is yet. Another alternative mentioned is to make the sender pay, say 0.01p per email. You could send 100 a day and not be concerned, but send a million a day and it gets pricey. Not sure this would be enforced though.
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