Computer dialling?

Herbie_Hancock_I_wish

Just had a call from my accountant friend who is on broad band. He told me that all of a sudden there was a noise from his machine sounding like it was making a phone call. Could this be possible?

JasX

Yes they all made those noises in the old days when on 'dial up' broadband..... this was followed by a raft of viruses that changes your dial up numbers to premium rate numbers and people were getting very high telephonee bills through spending hours at a time unknowingly connected.

1- on the damage side if your PC isn;t directly connected to a phone line not much will happen

2-If its inadvertent you might have setup a dial up connection accidentally and/or have it set to try and dial if your LAN/broadband connection drops out. Alternatively if you never use dial up internet go into device manager (or BIOS if its on your motherboard) and disable all modem cards/connections you have.

3-if they do have a dialler type virus be sure to advise them to use a good antivirus and keep their security patches up to date.... also scan emails/files you get from them with your AV and don;t trust them with any sensitive personal data about you (eg Name Address, bank details, social security number, financial info etc etc)

macman

Remove the modem card if its still in there.

lucylucky

"Yes they all made those noises in the old days when on 'dial up' broadband..... this was followed by a raft of viruses that changes your dial up numbers to premium rate numbers and people were getting very high telephonee bills through spending hours at a time unknowingly connected."

That sounds very familiar. Always managed to catch the !!!!!!s before any damage was done I am glad to say

Herbie_Hancock_I_wish

Thank for the replies. I would have thought that if the machine was only connected via broadband it would be safe to say that no premium dial up services could be accessed. A full scan has been done and nothing found.