Expensive Diallers – avoid like the plague

There’s a trend for sites of a certain nature to inveigle you into using a premium rate dialler in order to get content. David Dorn advises you to avoid like the plague

I’ve been hearing lately of a number of folks that have been nabbed by a particularly nasty sort of scam – the premium rate dialler scam. What happens is that you’re led towards a link that downloads a new dialler to your PC – your internet connection is then diverted through this dialler, which connects you via a premium rate number – an 090 type number, indeed. Like all of these numbers, the cost per minute can be as much as £1.50 – that’s £90 per hour.

The resolution to the problem is simple enough – you delete the dialler from your PC and you’re OK, but if you don’t realise that you’ve contracted one of these things, you can be in dead shtuck with your telephone company – one surfer we know of didn’t twig and was presented with a phone bill running into the multiple thousands – and no amount of protesting your innocence will get you off the hook.

Avoid

You must, then, avoid them like the plague. For your interest, I’ve located a company that actually creates the darned things – have a look at www.dropdial.com, to see what they make. Now before anyone flies off the handle, a dialler isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s the number that it connects by that’s the kicker, so you need to know how sites are likely to scam you into downloading and using one.

There’s the “Connect the way Webmasters do, and avoid your ISP’s charges” teaser. Looks promising, doesn’t it? Well, they’re not lying, necessarily. Some webmasters do connect that way, since they’re actually only paying themselves. You, on the other hand, will avoid paying perhaps an 0845 charge of a penny per minute, and have it replaced with maybe £1.50 a minute. Not a good idea.

Next up is the “See Janine completely uncensored – click this link” which downloads the dialler, terminates your connection and re-dials immediately using the new dialler you’ve just downloaded. As a by-product, it also sets the new dialler as the default connection. Nasty! No doubt you can guess the kind of site that has this kind of link.

Steering clear

They are just two examples of the kind of teaser a site will use to reel you in – there are others, which follow the same kind of procedure, so they should be fairly obvious. Avoiding the download ought to be reasonably straightforward – the general rule is that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

But if you do get caught out, just delete the dialler – it will be fairly obvious what it is, and once you’ve eradicated it, you can’t be caught out unless you download another.

There’s always an ADSL connection, of course. If you’re purely broadband, you’re as safe as houses, since these diallers look for modem type connections, and won’t work with ADSL routers and the Alcatel frog. Yet another good reason to go broadband!

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David Dorn