dial up scam

WHIZKID2

just got ntl bill- phone mainly used for faxes, £4 for faxes & £8 for rogue premium dial up. also next bill already includes £3 for same thing inlast 3 days.
obviously kids told to avoid sites if know rogue lurking there (though hardly fair!) but they cant always tell, and even if try to disconnect we still get a charge

We only have broadband (ntl), but ntl say as we are not on dial up with them, they wont do anything. seems dial up happens when kids randomly access gaming sites but though same company (ViaMoviles International), different phone numbers.
have norton internet secureity etc installed and thought i hjad set it up to stop this sort of thing.

Any ideas how to stop this? and how to get money back? i dont understand how it all works

bunking_off

Whilst there's all sorts of things you can do around contacting ntl and asking them to bar particular ranges (alternatively chaining your kids up to stop them accessing dubious sites) the simplest thing you can do is disconnect your computer from your phone line. As you've got broadband, you only need your computer wired up via the cable modem/DSL modem, not into the phone line directly.

By the sound of things, you use your PC as a fax machine, hence have the phone line connected for that. Does it really need to be connected all the time, or could you not just plug it in the wall when you want to send/receive a fax?

At £8 you've got off v.lightly so far - it can easily run to £hundreds.

Edinburghlass_2

I would also suggest you look on the Techie Board for lots of free download programmes like Ada-ware, Spywareblaster, Spy-bot etc to keep your pc safer. Norton on its own wont do it all.

WHIZKID2

thanks for the tips