I’m scanning my phone bill trying to figure out why it’s so high. Ah, there it is - all those calls to the UK that I made. My wife, mother of twins, dialing into a live webcam site in the UK for $5 a minute at 9:00 in the morning. :eek: My phone bill has a section for USBI. USBI? Who the hell is USBI? I never said they could be my long distance carrier. Telliss? One Call Comm? And what’s this other bill for Premier Premium Communications? So far I’m on the hook for $250 from these people. I googled Telliss and came up with this report about how a trojan horse dialer program was installed on this guy’s computer.
So now I have to scan my computer for viruses, spyware, dialer programs, what’s next? If there’s not some dickhead spreading viruses around there’s a sleazebag trojan-horsing software into my system to rip me off. I’m spending more and more time cleaning the crap out of my computer and it’s cutting into my precious surfing time. I mean last night I fell asleep waiting for ad-aware to finish it’s scan. How lame is that? I swear it’s getting to the point where keeping an internet account is more trouble than it’s worth. Now people are trying to steal from me. Thanks for ruining a great thing, you fuckers.
Yep. Sounds like a trojan dialer. That sucks majorly.
Odds are you can’t get the charges reversed this time, but you should talk to your phone company. They should be able to automatically block such calls if you request it. If they won’t, find a new phone company.
Also, go get Firefox, remove IE, and you’ll have much less trouble with spyware and such things.
Fucking scumware spreaders can eat my intestinal squeezings. I switched to Mozilla a few months ago due to a scumware assault. Last week, my wife accidentally used IE - once, for a few minutes - and the scumware came back. It managed to disable my printer. Things were back to normal after an AdAware and Spybot scan, but then the other day I got a phish attempt, which probably came from someone who installed a logger during the scumware outbreak.
Nobody’s said the crucial word: FIREWALL!! - I like Sygate’s, but a lot of people go for Zonealarm. Anti-virus software etc can do little until the trojan is on the computer, but a firewall can stop it getting there in the first place.
However, many telecom companies are having little sympathy for these situations, partly because to do so costs them a lot of money (if they don’t charge you, they still have to pay the charges to the next company along the line).
AOL’s browser basically uses the nuts and bolts of IE. Yes, they may have closed more holes, but it’s still not nearly as safe as going to a third-party product.
No they don’t. If a customer disputes third-party charges on a bill, the telco is free to remove the charges from the bill and charge them back to the originating biller.
When I worked for a telco our policy was pretty much “everybody gets one.” If you called us and said that such-and-such charges weren’t yours we’d forgive them. But next month when new calls to the same numbers, collect calls from the same numbers, etc. showed up again too bad for you.
I’m presuming non-USA-centricity in the discussion…UK phone companies have little-to-no right to refuse onward payment, and in any case most of these payments are made daily or weekly and so the money’s reached the Caymans long before the end consumer notices anything. And the biggest, BT, is explicit in its “pay up now, argue in the courts later” policy.
I’d be a little nervous about doing this, given how much effort Microsoft has apparently taken to force IE on its Windows customers. Still if it’s worked for you then maybe it’s worth looking.
Despite the fact that i never use it for browsing, however, i still like to have IE on my computer so i can test any webpages i write for compatability.
I’d also suggest spyguard (on top of spybot s&d and spyware blaster it monitors all activity), processguard(makes sure none of your protection can be disabled by virus/trojan), winpatrol and at least run HIjackthis once. You can got to spywarewarriors.com for more info and if (like me) not a techie they will analyze your HJT logs and tell you what to do. or a site that automatically analyzes your hjt logs http://hijackthis.de/index.php. You can also get Avast AV for free.
Hope this helps, my puter been pest free since.
And I 2nd the FF and thundermail votes (gotta love tabbed browsing not to mention all the cool extensions)
Thanks for the tips. I have Firefox and Spybot up and running. Since I’m running XP home I guess getting rid of IE should be left until later. Tomorrow Verizon. Is it best to start with Verizon, then work back to the billing entities (USBI, Tellis, One Call Comm) if necessary, or should I do it the other way around?
I’d also like to second the firewall suggestion. Many attacks are on OS vulnerabilities, not on IE itself, and it works a lot better if they can’t get to your computer in the first place. I use Zone Alarm; seems to work.
While it’s not a good idea to remove IE entirely, you can set Firefox to be the default browser, then remove all the IE shortcuts you can find except one, which you put on the desktop in a folder named: In case of badly coded website.
My wife, mother of twins, dialing into a live webcam site in the UK for $5 a minute at 9:00 in the morning. :eek: My phone bill has a section for USBI. USBI? Who the hell is USBI? I never said they could be my long distance carrier. Telliss? One Call Comm? And what’s this other bill for Premier Premium Communications? So far I’m on the hook for $250 from these people. I googled Telliss and came up with this report about how a trojan horse dialer program was installed on this guy’s computer.