Huge phone bill? Confused!

mfield · 03-07-2002 10:43am #1

I hope this is in the right section, here goes -

I got my phone bill the other day and as soon as I opened it I noticed that it was abnormally higher than usual. Through closer inspection I saw that there had been a phone call made to an international number and it was charged for being connected for just over an hour at a cost of €140 or so. I rang Eircom and they told me that the number dialled was a pleasure call number! I have definitely not called one of those numbers in a long long time since I was 16 at my mate’s house maybe! What is really strange is that a friend of mine also gets a huge phone bill the otherday, with phone calls to all sorts of international numbers too. Could this be something to do with a program I downloaded intentionally or accidentally? Has this happened to anyone else? Any help would be greatly appreciated?

mfield.

eth0_ · 03-07-2002 10:46am

Originally posted by mfield
Could this be something to do with a program I downloaded intentionally or accidentally? Has this happened to anyone else? Any help would be greatly appreciated?

mfield.

Could well be, there's a lot of unscrupulous porn sites that ask you to download a program to use their site, and the program in fact changes your dial up networking settings to dial an ISP in some far flung country.

Or so i've heard

Saruman · 03-07-2002 10:49am

I supposed its possible you got some program that dials a number through your modem when your computer is inactive.. like a screensaver.. that way you wont notice.. even more so if it was deisgned to call a premium number.. designed by the people at said number,.. it would be a virus that actually has a purpose... to make money and it would seem to work!! Check out for spyware programs.. look for background apps you dont recognise!

EvilGeorge · 03-07-2002 11:04am

Come on pull the other leg , pay your bill and lets all go back to sleep

meglome · 03-07-2002 11:04am

I've seen this type of thing installed in .dNC many times over. As we don't use dialup they don't work but they do install themselves and change the dialup settings, sometimes they mess up the Lan connection and have to be completely removed. Don't know what sites these are coming from as different customers install them at different times.

mfield · 03-07-2002 11:06am

My god this is scary! I was up in my brothers house one day sorting out his internet on his Mac and the it started dialling up an ISP in Japan - I noticed it immediately and deleted it - I guess this is what happened to me but the call was made at 4am and my PC would never be switched on at that time, I must of forgotten to turn it off.
I use Adaware to check out spyware on my PC I thought that this would do the trick. The time that this high cost phone call was made I was away and the PC may have been left on all night, I remember coming back home and there was a program on the PC called Pleasure Net that my brother must have downloaded unintentionally, this program put icons on the startup and when I tried to delete it it ran the program and started dialling!

How do you keep these proggys off your PC for good?

Thanks for all your help guys!

mfield.

EvilGeorge · 03-07-2002 11:07am

BTW there is a version of norton (one of the latest) with a bug in it which likes to run a live update every 5 mins , my mate got a large bill from that one day - boy was there war there!

Saruman · 03-07-2002 11:07am

Originally posted by EvilGeorge
Come on pull the other leg , pay your bill and lets all go back to sleep

Maybe his leg was not all that he was pulling ther evilgeorge... but no i believe him... I do not believe eircom.. have seen similar things on my phone bill.. and no one in my place called some number in a country we never heard of to some company that probably does not exist... Its possible EirCON made a mistake!

eth0_ · 03-07-2002 11:10am

Originally posted by meglome
I've seen this type of thing installed in .dNC many times over. ....different customers install them at different times.

*shock* dnc is turning into a porn viewing bolt hole? *cry* Trev told me it was family oriented :.O(

People who look at porn on the web are sad enough but those who'd have the audacity to do it in an internet cafe? They need a smack with the LART stick :-D

mfield · 03-07-2002 11:27am

Originally posted by Saruman

Maybe his leg was not all that he was pulling ther evilgeorge... but no i believe him... I do not believe eircom.. have seen similar things on my phone bill.. and no one in my place called some number in a country we never heard of to some company that probably does not exist... Its possible EirCON made a mistake!

I wasn't even in front of my PC to pull my middle leg, that's what annoys me even more

Do you really think that Eircom could have made a mistake, if so can I contest this and not pay the cost? I doubt it!?!?

Saruman · 03-07-2002 11:35am

I dont know.. the one we had was no where near €140, it was more like £5 or so... (this was last year). We called them and told them we did not call it but there is nothing we can do.. unless we can prove that at that time and date we were elsewhere and not at home to make the call!!! I mean Eircom can and do make mistakes... Remember there were people being charged VAT twice on their bill for ages before they noticed it!!

bashibazouk · 03-07-2002 12:21pm

You don't have a leg to stand on I'm afraid. Once a number has been dialled from yr CLI, you're responsible for the costs.

bricks · 03-07-2002 12:24pm

If you ring them and tell them not to allow your line to dial premium access numbers and posibly ban making international calls also. Tell them that the number was dialled by a virus on your computer and see if they will remove it from your bill. Or at least mark the number and track down the Con-Men in charge of the numer.

flamegrill · 03-07-2002 1:22pm

I was contracting in dublin yesterday and the company i was working for asked me to take a look at thier phone bill. there were 8 calls to guinea - they totalled 250 euro. each call was just under an hour. They are premium rate numbers - ie the person u call gets paid. I checked all the computers with phone lines and found one that had a small exe that when run dialed a number. so this is the case. the guy using it got it in an email or downloaded it ccidentally. he wasnt there at the time to say if he knew anything about it.

But it can happen to anyone.

mfield · 03-07-2002 2:19pm

Originally posted by flamegrill
I was contracting in dublin yesterday and the company i was working for asked me to take a look at thier phone bill. there were 8 calls to guinea - they totalled 250 euro. each call was just under an hour. They are premium rate numbers - ie the person u call gets paid. I checked all the computers with phone lines and found one that had a small exe that when run dialed a number. so this is the case. the guy using it got it in an email or downloaded it ccidentally. he wasnt there at the time to say if he knew anything about it.

But it can happen to anyone.

This is exactly what happened to me. I think the calls that were made on my phone were also to Guinea, although I will have to check it! It was connected for under an hour, and then it reconnected a couple of times just after that. People (including me) should watch out for this kinda crap! Imagine it was doin this for a couple of weeks before ya copped it, you'd have a right phone bill to pay!

mfield

Hobbes · 03-07-2002 2:24pm

Similar scam in Canada a few years back. Because due to some law the phone company has to foot the charges of long distance they actually blacklisted Russia from being able to be direct dialed.

zAbbo · 03-07-2002 2:27pm

two 13yr olds came into my net cafe yesterday and asked can they look at rotten.com

No- I replied, while sneaking off to the monitor to look the site up - ah so many memories, know i`m back on the steakandcheese.com and punchbaby.com trail

Karoma · 04-07-2002 2:22pm

..worked for my ... worked for a mate...

he didnt realise one had installed until he got a large phone bill. for once i wasn't there to be blamed,so he rang eircon and gave out - he got lucky - they dropped the charge *shrug* check your browsers security settings + increase... won't do a huge deal though... work from a restricted user account (OS permitting) .. even that may not work... just stop visiting these ahem 'specialist' sites... will work.

Ronan|Raven · 04-07-2002 5:21pm

I recently fixed up the pc belonging to the owner of my local. Her son has recently left the gaff anyway and she noticed an uber big bill. He isnt the greatest of tech heads and had inadvertidly dl'd a supposed "video" from a site of "pleasure" He obviously didnt realise a 30kb file isnt a movie!

All they do is set themselves up as the default Dial Up Connection and are easy to remove, also scan through yer C:\Windows\system for what should be an "insert porn dialler name here -Uninstall file" and delete it, dont run it as it will simply reinstall itself all over again

Karoma · 05-07-2002 8:25am

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Huge phone bill? Confused!

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