Rogue Diallers (NB)

Not sure if it's the case where you are but you may wish to check some of the other broadband suppliers like AOL or Wanadoo. Although they provide their service over BT lines they are not constricted by the same Service Level Agreements as BT and will often provide service where BT will not.

You can't get BT broadband in the small Welsh village where I live but a few of my friends and neighbours get it through AOL with no problems.

<hr width=100% size=1>Of all the things I've lost - I miss my mind the most!
 
I forgot to say, you are also safer if you change to the Mozilla browser (free download). Most of these nasties (diallers, adware etc) come in via ActiveX controls, which Mozilla doesn't support. I use Mozilla for general surfing and only use IE6 if I know exactly where I'm going, like banking.



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not microsoft so it must be good...

i started using firefox instead of IE after a hijack incident. true it doesn't let rogue activex controls damage settings but do beware that it has bugs. it has trashed my favourites list and loses the caret frequently. it also prevents me keeping 2 hotmail inboxes open at once which i could do with IE and it takes ages to load.

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Re: not microsoft so it must be good...

very surprised to hear you are having problems with firefox. I recommend it to everyone I meet (well nearly) and heard nothing but praise for it. I find it much faster than IE and keeping multiple copies of windows open is its particular forte. Maybe you should upgrade or reinstall ??

However there is an email programme from the same stable called thunderbird which i have struggled with for weeks and just abandoned. It has great spam filters, everything else is a nightmare !!

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Re: not microsoft so it must be good...

Benbow - should thank you for your Firefox tip a month or two ago.

I'm a convert having previously ranked alternative browsers (along with Linux) as way too nerdy for me..

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This has happened to me - about 2 years ago, to the tune of £120 in one evening. The dial up connection was changed whilst I was online - with no way of knowing it had happened. Got a call from BT the next morning asking whether I had children in the house as "your phone use profile has suddenly changed". Very efficient of them. I contacted ICSTIS first by phone then by various letters. They investigated - basically said they could do nothing about these scams. Complained to BT because as I saw it - they were going to take money off me (as part of my phone bill) and then pass it on to criminals. Their reply was that they had already 'paid' these peremium rate people in advance (don't ask me theins and outs of it) and therefore BT would not refund me.

The only useful advice I can give is for you to ask BT to 'block' all premium rate numbers from your phone. This is easily done with one call to BT customer services - once you have got through their deadly automated system.

In short my advice is - save your time - write it off as experience and block your phone - oh and get a firewall installed - Zone Alarm from www.zonelabs.com is free and effective.



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