Dial a Fortune but not for YOU.

jambutty · 01-06-2005, 14:33

I have recently read about how whilst you are surfing away your modem can be hijacked and your Internet connection is made, not through your local telephone number but via one abroad and could be costing you upwards of £2 per minute. That’s about $4 US.

To read more about it have a look at: http://www.reconnectwarning.com/

For UK readers you can get some FREE software from British Telecom that will stop your modem from being hijacked in this way. Go to: http://www.bt.com/btprivacyonline/ download it now. Not tomorrow but right now.

Once installed all you have to do is to right click on the icon in the start-up task bar and select Options. There will already be a few phone prefix numbers listed so just delete those that do not pertain to the number that your computer dials to connect you to your ISP and click OK. You can if you wish input the whole number that is used to dial your ISP. I have.

You can add numbers of your choice if you wish.

NTL users have a look at the NTL web site for their solution to the possible problem.

Foreigners, from the UK viewpoint, should access their own ISP web site to see what they have or check with your telephone supplier. I believe that it is AT & T in the States but you will know best.

chav1 · 01-06-2005, 16:44

i assume its only 56k users that need to worry

harwood red · 01-06-2005, 16:49

does this affect those of us on broadband??

chav1 · 01-06-2005, 17:04

i dont see how broadband user could possibly be effected

cable modems cant dial out

Neil · 01-06-2005, 17:23

No it dosen't

entwisi · 01-06-2005, 19:14

It doesn't affect your BB connection but I have seen loads of people who move from to BB but don't disconnect their old modem. These trojans can 'switch' your settings over to using the old dial up modem. You should notice the drop in speed but often people just put it down to teh net running slow for a day or so.

The moral? disconnect the cable from your old modem when you move to BB.

Ian

harwood red · 01-06-2005, 21:08

well you can tell I'm not a techi!!!! cheers for that

arnan · 03-06-2005, 15:20

I am the developer/owner of the ReconnectWarning software program. I would like to thank jambutty for putting a link to my site in his message. Last December, I searched for many telephone company sites in English-speaking countries and none of them mentioned a software solution on their countermeasures pages. I sent messages to each company suggesting that they would be doing their subscribers a service if they informed them of this. I even included the names of two of my competitors. British Telecom was one of them. When I read jambutty's message, I was surprised and disappointed that they would take my suggestion, prepare their own program and provide it for free.

I was unable to download their program to compare it with mine. Has anyone done a comparison? I wouldn't want to think it, but if their program's interface is similar to mine there may be a case of copyright infringement.

If you have broadband you are safe from modem hijacking. However, some experts believe that if you use VoIP you will be susceptible.
Thanks

jambutty · 05-06-2005, 10:56

Some broadband users are susceptible to having their modem hijacked. People like me on Freeserve, sorry I mean Wanadoo, have a modem and a phone number to dial to get connected.

Those people on cable and the always on system need have no worries unless they have their old modem still connected to the phone line. The solution for them is simple. Disconnect the old modem but they will have done that already to free up the phone line unless the phone line for the computer was an extra line.

I have no idea why you couldn’t download BT’s programme arnan unless you are not in the UK or you are on cable. So I can’t help you there.

vorlon24 · 06-06-2005, 09:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by jambutty

Disconnect the old modem but they will have done that already to free up the phone line unless the phone line for the computer was an extra line.

Before my modem cable went up the chute I had that connected as well as the broadband modem, and I don't have an extra phone line.

I used the dial-up to keep my freeserve email address, something you need to do every 60 days to prevent the account being suspended.

I don't use my Tiscali address for 2 reasons; one being that it gets bombed with spam every day (even though I have never registered for anything with it), and the other being that I want to leave them the first opportunity I get.

arnan · 09-06-2005, 06:19

I obtaned a copy of BT's program and ran some tests. First, it's a little user unfriendly with many unnecessary clicks. One point to be aware of is that BT's documentation states that the program only works on WinXP and Windows Professional 2000. If you have installed it on another OS, it may not work the way it should. One test I ran was to try to connect with no registered number, and when the box popped up I clicked "cancel" then tried to immediately connect again. The program froze and I had to open task manager to close the program down. So there is at least one bug and perhaps more.

Jambutty is right though, you should have protection and it can be had for $10 and up. What's $10, an hour's worth of work?

arnan · 10-06-2005, 14:27

Last summer, when I started working on my program, I was sure that hijackers would someday find a way to exploit broadband and cable as well as dial-up connections and I mentioned this at times on my site. It seems I was proved right by an article on the homesite of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE). As a reference, you can read the abstract at http://ieee.ca/canrev/cr49/pages19-20.pdf

So, don't hesitate to get protection.