Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Phone Dialer Viruses -- What Can a Victim Do?

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Topic: Phone Dialer Viruses -- What Can a Victim Do?

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 05-09-2004 11:49 AM

I've tried Googling this topic, but can't come up with anything specific. Naturally, there's nothing at all to be found at SBC's website on the subject. Far be it for the phone company to help.

To get to the point, I think my one of my relatives had a trojan virus attack her computer -the kind that installs phone dialer hacks. Her computer dialed a number in Great Britain something like 600 times late at night. She found out this when receiving a really big phone bill. The first thing she did was cancel her internet service, but I told her she would probably need to format her hard drive to get rid of the virus itself. Having an ISP account is irrelevant when it comes to phone dialers.

But then there's still the matter of the phone bill? Now, all of my credit cards and even my bank account have protections against things like identity theft and other scams. Don't the phone companies have anything like this? What kind of recourse does she have?

Personally, I would be tempted not to pay the bill had I received it myself. Will the phone company help? It would seem to me that the dialer activity is a very illegal thing. If the phone company refused to collect the charges, the scumbag asshole running the scam would have to crawl out of his stinking hole to get paid. And then he could get arrested.

Of course, I'm stating the most obvious way of fighting computer related crime: follow the money trail. Our dopey Department of Justice is doing very little in this regard. Dummies.

I don't think my Aunt should have to pay this bill. If it had happened to me, I would be having a nice conversation with an SBC District Manager. I would tell them to make the play of stopping the dialer payment to hopefully force the scumbag out of his hole hoping to collect. If SBC would not help, then I would consider going to the press about it to embarrass the holy shit out them for having totally bad customer service.

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Robert Stawiarski
Film Handler

Posts: 62
From: MW
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 05-09-2004 12:17 PM

Your theory assumes the programmer programmed his number into the dialer. What if the number is unrelated to the programmer? i.e. If someone were to program in a legit 900 number into a dialer and was not affiliated with the 900 number, and the victim's computer is affected with the dialer program, the 900 number company would still have a legal right to collect the charges regardless of the program. While it would be good customer service for SBC to cancel the charges, they are not legally obligated to. SBC is simply a phone service provider, and are not responsible for what users mistakenly dial (or when they download malicious programs that do it for them.) Was it a premium number she dialed or just a standard UK call?

With that said, the FTC has caught and broken up similar scams in the past, including reimbursing the affected users. I used my elite Google skills and was able to find info pretty quick. [Smile]

I would read up more on it, explain the story to SBC right away. If that fails, contact the FTC.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=phone+illegal+dialer+program+charges+bill

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 05-12-2004 01:35 AM

In other words, has Bobby's aunt fallen victim to electronic theft or a virus designed to cause malicious damage but not for the perpetrator's personal financial gain?

The fact that this worm dialled a foreign number makes it all the more complicated. Presumably if it called a premium rate number in the UK, then the thief would collect from a UK 'phone company, meaning that any action for recovery would have to be taken there. I'd guess that Bobby's aunt's 'phone company will simply say that they connected the calls out of the US and paid the UK premium rate on her behalf, and therefore cannot withhold the money from the thief itself.

There was a variant on the 419 scam here a couple of years ago in which victims received an e-mail inviting them to 'phone what turned out to be a £20 per minute premium rate line in Italy to 'confirm their award' or something like that. British Telecom refused to pay the victims (one of which ran up a four-figure bill) on the grounds that they had already passed the money to Italy, and told them that they would have to take court action in Italy to recover their money.

The UK government's telecommunications industry regulator is Ofcom - it might be worth contacting them to see if they know anything about the number involved.

Here is some info on the cost of UK premium rate numbers, all of which begin 09XXX (+9XXX from abroad). The really nasty ones are +9997 ($8 per minute approx.), +91110/44/88 ($1.30ish) and +91161 ($0.80ish).

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