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BB and Premium dial-up sites


doug
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'Er in doors had Watchdog on earlier and I happened to take in the topic relating to people getting hacked and subsequently having to pay for excessive 'phone bills for connection time to premium 'phone numbers. Calls they have not made and usually to porn sites. As I'm on BB I thought I couldn't be vulnerable. Question is can I be vulnerable or does the filter for the high frequency BB connection prevent this?

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Doug, as far as I am aware, your BB connection cannot dial out to a premium number. However, that does not mean you are not vulnerable to these "infections".

If you also have a standard modem in your pc, and it is still connected to the phone line, then it would be possible for you to make one of these premium rate calls from your pc. You would in all probability notice it though.

However, that still leaves the problem of a nice piece of spyware/hijackware on your pc.

Regards. Mr. M.

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I took the old dial up modem out when I installed the DSL one. So I should not be vulnerable, or again am I? I have ZA and AVG running, but I'm still pondering on the technology aspect.

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Despite a certain paranoid person raising the same question at PCA a while ago and never being satisfied with the answer nothing has changed.

An ADSL modem can only connect to an ADSL service. Since you don't pay for the useage with the ADSL service you can't be charged for it.

If you have a normal dial up modem still functioning on the PC and connected to the phone line then it can be used to dial any number. Should a dialer make it onto your PC then it may use that modem to connect and you may end up with a huge phonebill.

So to be safe, only plug a dial in modem in if and when you have to use it. If as you say you took the old one out then sleep easy, nothing can dial out of your computer.

I think ADSL is even more secure than this because of how the system works you can only connect to the ISP you have a contract with (or use one of the 'free' test accounts). Should it become more common for bandwidth charging then you may see someone develop something that eats bandwidth, but this is unlikely to have any financial reward for the person involved so is perhaps unlikey to happen.

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To add an extra remark, the normal phone system is analogue and BB is digital. These dialers rely on the analogue phone network to function and attempts by them to connect via the digital system will fail.

I am very conscious, though, that some little tike somewhere working his gonads off developing some digital device to extract money from the unwary.

I have a dial up modem connected all the time as I use it for faxing. It is an external device and I can see exactly what it is doing by the lights flashing on it

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Living in the back of beyond, the prospect of getting non-BT telephony facilities are almost nil.

We did, however get broadband very early in its availability. This was due to the fact that the then chairman and several directors of BT live close by.

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