What are dialers and how to defend yourself

Dialer viruses are special viruses that alter your internet connection settings, replacing your telephone number with a tolled number

With the proliferation of ADSL connections, dialer viruses have almost disappeared. Almost, in fact. After it peaked in the early 2000s, when thousands of Italians were infected by dialers, the spread of ADSL seemed to have stopped the malware. But it didn’t, and he continues to report his victims.

But what is a dialer really? Calling it a virus is actually a mistake. The dialer is a self-executing program (.exe) that changes your Internet connection settings and replaces your phone number with a tolled number. The famous 899s that are charged per minute and can cost up to five euros. Thanks to the ADSL connection and the fact that we are always connected to the network, dialers are going through a decline. However, with the advent of smartphones and tablets, they have been given a new lease of life and are re-infecting users’ devices.

People using a slow connection such as Dial-Up or ISDN are the most vulnerable, as the dialer directly replaces the number to connect to the network, but recently they are also hiding behind sites offering paid content (wallpapers, images, movies). Defense against dialers is possible, but you have to be very careful when surfing the net.

What are dialers and how they work

Dialers are not illegal per se. Many companies use them to charge users for content they sell online. In fact, in the case of dialers, the cost of the service offered is added directly to the telephone bill and there is no need for a credit card. However, when the company uses dialers without informing the user and installs the executable on the computer under false pretenses, then a scam occurs. And in most cases, companies do not warn users of the true cost of using dialers.

Companies use tricks to install dialers on users’ computers that are not legitimate. For example, they guarantee that the content they offer is free, and the only requirement is that you have software installed on your computer, which is also free. In fact, this program is a dialer that connects the user to a paid number. And this cost is added to the phone bill, without the user immediately realizing that he has been cheated.

How to defend against dialers

To defend yourself against dialers, learn about the most common ways that fraudsters install executable files on users’ computers. In addition to hiding dialers behind seemingly free programs, hackers send malware via email. They send it as an attachment and use sneaky messages to convince the user to install it. The advice is always the same: if you do not know the sender of the e-mail or are unsure of the content of the message, you better delete it. Moreover, they are very difficult to detect and the user is not immediately aware of their presence. And if the dialer is found, the software does everything in its power to block its uninstallation. It may happen that after removing the program, the dialer will automatically reinstall itself. In such cases, it is necessary to reach out and block software access to the computer.