Dialers

[Jami]

I found out through a phone bill I have dialer in my computer.
Any suggestions on how to get rid of it?

[wenwilder]

AVG (http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php), Spybot S & D (http://security.kolla.de/), and Ad-aware (http://www.lavasoft.de/).

All three are free programs, all three should be permenant residence on any computer, and all three are the most suggested in the anti-virus community. Depending on which dialer it is - they should remove them quickly and effortlessly. If you have a problem though, let us know. :)

[Dragonsi]

A friends puttie tries to dial-up whenever Windows Explorer is opened. It is dialing the correct ISP and phone number and I have scanned his PC with Ad-Aware. The scan did come up with 43 infections but after reboot, it still tries to dial-up when you open 'My Computer' for example.

He has WinXP Home (SP2), but was doing this with SP1a installed.

Is this just Windows trying to talk to home or something a little more nasty? (not that MS trying to contact home isn't nasty)

[mikmik]

Dragonsi, that doesn't sound right.

I have sp2, so I went to 'Control Panel' then 'Security Center' 'Windows Firewall' and selected the 'Advanced' tab. This shows all the programs that want/have access to the internet, and I see nternet Explorer in mine, but not Windows Explorer - desktop, my Computer, Documents, etc.

It still may be legit, I am not sure - windows does 'talk to home' for the time etc., but not like what you are describing. (I am pretty sure ;])

This is what I use to track down this stuff:
TCPView (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/tcpview.shtml)

TCPView is a Windows program that will show you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the local and remote addresses and state of TCP connections. On Windows NT, 2000 and XP TCPView also reports the name of the process that owns the endpoint. TCPView provides a more informative and conveniently presented subset of the Netstat program that ships with Windows. The TCPView download includes Tcpvcon, a command-line version with the same functionality.

TCPView works on Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 98/Me. You can use TCPView on Windows 95 if you get the Windows 95 Winsock 2 Update from Microsoft

These apps at sysinternals.com (http://www.sysinternals.com/index.shtml) are the best thing going, as far as getting windows information. They are tiny and do not install, you just unzip the folder and run them. They were just voted best windows information tools by IT techs at PC World.

Anyways, can you use this and watch your friends connection activity when you open stuff?

The filemon may be of help here also, but it racks up a LOT of activity. First things first, though :O)

[Dragonsi]

Nice one MikMik

I'll download a few things and take them with me next time I visit... I'll let you know what I find..

[mikmik]

Alright, good luck, fellow tech and malware fighter! It is nice to know wen is in the area, too ;o), if need be!

[bvphoto]

I'm no expert and maybe the situation is different but, when I had dial up - I had to take my username - password off automatically login & login each time or it would repeatedly dial up on its own. We never figured out why.