mj

ok, not a new thing, a while back my neighbour got stung with a £250 phone bill after a "dialler" installed itself with her knowledge.

The organisation she got in touch with have come back with this reply, basically they have fined the premium rate company 100k, and banned them from operating for 2 yrs, however, they also say " redress to be offererd to complainants"

The address of the company is given, but the ICSTIS state they will not pursue claims on your behalf. The company is in South Africa, what are the chances of my neighbour gettinghy her money back?

cheers,

mike.

letter below:

Cheeky Jim

Nasty piece of work some of these diallers.

Just a correction - Lugano is in Switzerland...which is also outside of the EU - cunning...

Not sure if it helps or not. But I am sure the Swiss authorities would not want to have much to do with these companies...not with their reputation.

Jamie

angrynorth

And people say Mac's cost more than PC's

dpb

and having a mac would prevent this happening

angrynorth

Most certainly would Whilst also stopping spyware, adware, popups, virus's and other general computing nastiness.

mj

when it first happened I looked into it a little bit, it seems she has got of lightly, some people have been stung for thousands-just shows, check your bills

Jerome

Check your bills and unplug your modem when not using it.

imlach

Should happen less & less as more & more people get broadband.....

Chrisgr31

Assumming they unplug their dial-up modem, which not everyone does, as it is useful for fax etc

Dieseldog

So if you have Broadband you can't fall prey Imlach?

chiark

Apart from the nastiness that is targeted specifically at Macs...

if you want to think that using a Mac makes you immune, please disconnect from the internet before some l33t 5kr1pt 54dd0 0wnz j0oOOO! (etc for the humour impaired)

angrynorth

Such as?

chiark

What would you like: Virus? Key logger? Macro virus? Trojan? I daresay a mac dialler has already been written, too. Admittedly, rather than a virus proclaiming to be pictures Anna Kornikova nekkid, the most popular exploit could be a focus-fixing plugin for photoshop : mac users would be bound to run that...

It just makes me smile a little bit that people believe they're inherently secure by running a mac, or linux. The smug linux users are normally the same ones that log in as root all the time "cos it's easiest".

There are less exploits currently for macs, true, but that's because the vast majority of PCs connected to the net are Windows PCs so virus writers go for the maximum effect.

But running MacOS (classic or X) does not preclude the need for firewall and AV software, and good sense . OS X panther had a rather nasty exploit where all you had to do was open an MP3 file in Finder, and a buffer exploit in the ID3 tag could execute arbitrary code.

angrynorth

There are no virus's for OSX, not a single one

There hasn't been a mac dialler written either, although it would be possible to write one it would need to be run by the user first and would display itself as an applescript which would present you with a few lines of code that the average user would look at and close. Not only that, it could not be transferred without your knowledge from just visiting a web page.

The (very good) firewall is turned on as standard in OSX.

Also for the millionth time, using the old,

"the only reason why Windows is targeted is because there are more people using Windows"

is utter toss and its been proven wrong a million times. Security through obscurity is not a viable excuse, and at its heart (unix) osx is inherently more secure than Windows, as is Linux.

I don't run root and its not enabled from installation, I do not think that I am 100% secure running a Mac but I know I am 1000 times less likely to be a victim of a virus, trojan, dialler or any other hack than a wintel user. That is a fact.

angrynorth

To reply to your edit:

Which was not self replicating as its Windows counterpart could be. There was only one example of this file found too, none in the wild.

It was also fixed within 2 days of being found. Microsoft's response to sasser? About 3 weeks.

chiark

You wanted an example, you got a specific one . I don't care nearly enough to follow the virus world in detail, but I do know that there's no such thing as a perfect OS!

The only point I am trying to make is that running MacOS, or Linux, or FreeBSD, or whatever does not mean you can expect to be utterly free from exploits, that's all. If windows ever becomes harder to attack and/or macs gain in strength of numbers, you can bet your bottom dollar that exploits will appear.

For a really quick response, see how long it took to patch Firefox for a Win32-based exploit... It was definitely less than 24 hours.

imlach

No, as ADSL or cable modems don't have facilities within them to dial voice numbers....ADSL works in a completely different manner to a telephone or conventional modem.

As someone else said, the only reason to leave a dial-up modem plugged in would be for fax use, or backup dial-up use should your broadband connection fail.

Dieseldog

Imlach, Thanks Chap!

Graz

No modem in my PC. Just an Ethernet connection to the cable modem. I love broadband

angrynorth

Fine, but don't start bandying bad ill-informed information about. Giving the impression that OSX is not as secure as Windows because that is laughable.

Like I say though, on OSX, there are no virus' at all and exploits are massive news when they happen because its so rare.

How many exploits have been reported for Windows in the past month alone?

mj

chiark,angrynorth-

I appreciate your replies, but this PC Vs Mac debate is not answering my question, ie, what are the chances of her getting the money back?

angrynorth

sorry mj

in all honesty I can't claim to know a thing about chasing up the money.

Hope you do manage to get it sorted though.

unclebuck

mj

ub-?

chiark

Err, back on topic, no chance IMHO.

Mr North, sir, I apologise if I gave the impression that OSX was in any way less secure than windows - the point is, as I have said in practically every post here, that no OS is 100% secure and people need to have a clue as to what they allow to run on their own machine.

It really isn't a PC vs Mac debate, and I apologise if it came across as that: I'd love a powerbook, and I admire OS X greatly : if I had hardware to run it, I would be running it.

Cheers,
Nick.

mj

what a load of bollocks. And we get our "off topic" posts moderated, cheers pal.

chiark

The "no change IMHO" was relating to your chance of getting money back- Not back on topic. I realise that might not have been clear now I've read your response! Sorry 'bout that!

I don't think you've got a cat in hell's chance of getting the money back - it would cost considerably more to try unfortunately . I hope I'm wrong on that.

That clear and non-load-of-bollocks enough for you?

mj

a million apoligies chiark, I well & truly misread your post.

hence the bollocks




BTW, PC's Rule k.o.

chiark

I read what I wrote again and thought "***** - that ain't what I meant - I can see why someone would be upset at that", so if I misread it, well, the author was a d1ck

Anyhow, thinking about this more, speak to the Citizen's Advice Bureau as there may be things that you can do to make it interesting if the ******* ever try to visit this country (assuming you've got the correct name etc)

But I think it'd be unwise to put effort into chasing the money as you could waste a lot of time (and money) in doing so, and find that you're trying to wade through a smoke screen covering tracks.
Cheers,
Nick.

CrisPDuk

I had one of these nasty little parasites install itself a couple of months ago, but were on b/b with the modem disconnected (phew). I didn't realise it was there till I was in the office when all was quiet and I could hear the modem trying to connect

The little ******* install themselves all over your o/s, it took forever to get rid