Mobile Broadband and rogue diallers?

PlutoinCapricorn

I have not used BT dialup for a long time, and have recently cancelled my BT landline, so I am safe from the rogue diallers who ran up large phone bills at the expense of their victims.

I now have mobile broadband, and am a bit paranoid about something similar being started now that fewer and fewer people are using dialup.

Has anyone heard anything about this?

fwor

From a simplistic point of view: No - mobile broadband is not a dialled service, so the dongle has no need for the ability to make a dialled (e.g. premium rate) call.

However, I've no doubt that all dongles are based upon generic chipsets, some or all of which probably do have the ability built-in. Whether that could be exploited by malware is as yet unknown. I've not seen any reports of it having happened, and you can be fairly sure that it will be headline news if it does.

TBH, if you pay attention to your computer security, you have no reason to fear this any more than any other form of malware. For example if your PC were "owned" by a botnet, it could generate enough traffic to quickly exceed your allowance and run up significant additional bandwidth bills from your ISP.

mr_fishbulb

Hmmmm interesting attack. Malware on the machine to get dongle software to send sms to premium rate text numbers.

PlutoinCapricorn

Thak you for the replies. I am not really very techie and am a bit paranoid.

My Connections treats the dongle as a dialup device, it has a phone number. I know that it does not dial a landline, but wondered whether it could be hijacked anyway.

I have Bullguard, so presumably it will see any such attempts off.