internet bill+strange numbers

gazzer

Guys... i am probably in the wrong place to post this so if one of the mods can move it to the appropriate place i would appreciate it.

Anyways i got a call from my mother last night to say that she had gotten her phone bill which was a whopping 300 euro (its usually around 100). The extra money seemed to be from 7 different calls made to the same number... after a lot of ringing around to Eircom she discovered that they were internet charges. The lady she spoke to said it seemed that when somebody in the house was on the internet they logged onto some chat room and this meant the dial up connection rerouted to somewhere in Namibia and that is where the extra charges come from.

As it turns out the only person that uses the internet in the house is my brother (i dont live at home).. but strangely enough out of these 7 'Namibian' calls listed my brother knows for a fact that he could not have been on the computer for at least 4 of the dates and times listed on the bill as he was away in Liverpool, nobody else in the house would have used the internet mainly because they wouldnt have a clue about it.

So my question is.... is it possible for a hacker to log on to the internet using somebody elses home phoneline or something like that and if not how would you know if your internet connection had gone from the eircom one to some other more costly one.???

If anyone has any ideas or answers i would appreciate it... i told the mother i would ring her later and tell her if i could find anything out.


Cheers.

Gaz

narommy

That's really bad!

They're called dialers. The download onto your computer with lots of other evil stuff. spyware, adware, hijakers. you should be able to find it in the connections folder. Deleting is might work, but probably not. I've no technical computer knowledge so try majorgeeks.com or pcworld.com

Beware of other sites cos there are loads of dodgey programs which will claim to fix your computer but won't.

You could always try to get the numbers barred

It's one of the advantages of having to dial 9 for an outside line. the program doesn't.

As far as i know once the computer is switched on the can dial up.

I use fire fox from mozilla now. the baddies haven't cracked it yet. IE is fairly open to them

BYE

Third_Echelon

Unfortunately this is quite common now.

I was reading on the BBC technology section about a guy in England who racked up a bill of about £1500. His daughter was using the net for homework and school etc. Sky news did a section on it as well.

Basically as the previous poster said, its spyware that drops your call when you are on the net and reconnects to another number usually somewhere in africa and charges about €2 per min. They can also dialup anytime when the pc is powered on and connected to the phone line.

You are liable to pay the bill unfortunately. You just have to be careful with spyware etc. Always unplug the net cable after use if you can. Its just a habit i got into when i was on dial-up.

seamus

gazzer wrote:

The lady she spoke to said it seemed that when somebody in the house was on the internet they logged onto some chat room and this meant the dial up connection rerouted to somewhere in Namibia and that is where the extra charges come from.

:mad:
Eircom customer service scum. Don't believe a word she's said. They're told to tell customers that someone was watching porn, or in illicit chatrooms when a call like this comes through.

This is a dialer. It's a piece of software that installs itself on your machine while you surf, usually without any kind of promtping, replaces your ordinary dial-up connection with one of its own, and dials premium rate numbers in other countries. It can and does dial all on its own, if the computer is left on and unattended, and if someone is using the internet, it often sets itself up so that they unwittingly use the premium rate number instead of the normal one.

As Third_echelon said, she is liable for the €300. She was lucky. Some have been in excess of €5000. There's a thread on the top of the IrelandOffline forum with a link to another thread (about diallers) that has more links to software to help you defend against these.
Best practice is to become familiar with how to see what numbers your computer is dialling (very simple) and always disconnect your computer from the phoneline when you've finished using the internet.

DAEDULUS

i once had a bill for a bill for an impressive 1300yoyos....

oh,wait maybe thats not good ;(

VenusDiablo

Ive been hearing lots of stories similar to this one recently and it seems to be happening more and more.
My home computer is dial up. is there any way of finding out if this is happening on my home computer before i get a whopper of a phone bill?

Sleepy

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

That'll usually find anything out of place on your machine.

shiv

to the original poster, you could try and contact Regtel, they deal with any disputes regarding premium numbers and their associated costs..sometimes the charges stand, sometimes they're unauthorized and they refund the customer/phone company.

most times however the charges are valid and the person accessing the internet and dialling in will have had to accept the terms and conditions for this by clicking OK on a pop-up box, although i have heard of cases where apparently this never happened..

i think budget telecom had some issues with this..

woosaysdan

ad-aware also puts some spyware onto your system

MrVestek

omfg shut up and be quiet.

Tom Dunne

woosaysdan wrote:

ad-aware also puts some spyware onto your system

Don't be silly, it doesn't. Gazzer - do as Seamus said, get over to the Ireland Offline forum and read all about it over there.

You need Ad-aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, up to date virus software (try http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php) and Zone Alarm. All of these are free and all of these will prevent this from happening again.

Drag00n79

A friend of mine had a similar problem the other day. His bill had loads of items called "NV Loading". Each one was costing an extra 15c or 20c. I loaded Spybot Search & Destroy onto his PC and we found it. Search & Destroy is excellent freeware. Load of sites are trying to put spy cookies onto your PC. I didn't realise it was so prevalent until I started using S&D. I noticed even the eircom.net site tries to load "Doubleclick!".

Tom Dunne

You have to be carefuly here - cookies are relatively harmless. They are simple text files that store basic info on where you have been on the interweb. Yes, programs can track what sites you have looked at, but personally, I don't see that as a major problem.

Spybot and Ad-aware will report cookies as problems, but cookies themselves will not harm your computer. It's the other stuff that cause you problems.

sceptre

shiv wrote:

to the original poster, you could try and contact Regtel, they deal with any disputes regarding premium numbers and their associated costs..sometimes the charges stand, sometimes they're unauthorized and they refund the customer/phone company.

Under normal circumstances (ie modem phoning Irish premium numbers) that'd be an excellent suggestion shiv (or at least worth trying) but if gazzer's mum's modem has been phoning Namibia it's not Regtel's area. Comreg (the Irish telecoms regulator) are finally (after lots of complaints and downright frauds) thinking about doing something about it but it won't help gazzer's mum as there's nothing in the actual pipeline at the moment (and what they're considering won't include Namibia either).

As seamus said, please check out the thread on the Ireland Offline forum (direct thread link) as this dialler is probably still on the PC.

Hobbes

Spybot + adware are both the win.

Sounds like a porn dialer alright.

Also stop using IE. The thing is full of holes that allow this sort of crap to be installed on your machine. The latest exploit only requires the person to move their scroll bar in the page window and thier machine is infected.

Paddy20

Years ago. I received a bill from EirCon for the normal calls + an extra €700 for calls to a strange number which my computer was dialling faster than humanly possible.

I was in a state of shock. Got nowhere with Eircon naturally. "Pay up or be disconnected forthwith" was their response.

Having spent a large part of my life in Citizens Advice, I was not going to take this lying down. So I fought it in every way that I could think of, but in the end I had to pay up in full.

So, I got on to EirCoN 'Credit Control' and offered to pay the large sum off at €20 per bi-monthly billing period. It is an offer they have to accept as you are NOT refusing to pay. They accepted and I paid, but I have never dealt with the Bastar** since.

I am now a happy U.TV Broadband Clicksilver & telephone call charges customer with unbelievably low telephone bills. Which are now about too become even lower with U.TV's introduction of FREE local and national Ireland & UK offpeak and all weekend telephone calls without charge ?.. details are on the Net/Comms Forum on Boards, as it was launched this evening. Even the line rental can now be paid to U.TV as well. Sheer magic

Good luck.

theciscokid

I agree with Hobbes stop using IE use FIREFOX

Drag00n79

Just switched over to FireFox

shiv

in relation to the international premium numbers going through unheard-of countries, apparently comreg has decided that all telecoms must bar these numbers/calls to these countries in dispute and only unbarr at customer's request for their own protection..guess they've been inundated with these issues..

gazzer

Thanks guys for all the replies... i didnt realise the problem was so big... at least know i can tell the mother exactly what is happening... going to go up to the house at the weekend and get the necessary software installed on the computer.

Thanks again

NeoSlicerZ

I'd recommend Spyware Blaster too, it immunizes your PC against a lot of spyware