A-Squared Anti-Dialer - gives bad dialers the busy signal

tip from ClifNotes, Sept 2006 - Updated Jul 2007, permalink Dial-up Networking Tools

Update: This is now at version 3.0

I recently received an email from Emsisoft, who are security software specialists. They have a new freeware product out for home users only. It's called a-squared Anti-Dialer.

I don't use a telephone to connect to the internet anymore, but I've heard that over 20% of the people on the net use a dial-up connection. I felt it might be a good idea to pass this on, because there are many ways you could get infected with a malicious dialer. I haven't tried this program, but I trust the company. I've used a couple of their free programs in the past and they are typically very good. (see A2Free)

Why would you need it?

If you have a telephone hooked up to the modem on your PC, you probably need some kind of protection from dialers.

What is a dialer?

According to Wikipedia: Dialers are necessary to connect to the internet (at least for non-broadband connections), but some dialers are designed to connect to premium-rate numbers. The providers of such dialers often search for security holes that may be present in the operating system installed on the user's computer and use them to change the computer to dial up through their number, pocketing the additional money for themselves. Alternatively, some dialers inform the user what it is that they are doing, with the promise of special content, accessible only via the special number. Examples of this content include software for download, (usually illegal) MP3s, 'underground' hacking materials such as viruses, and in the case of at least one website, pornography. read more

click image to expand

What does Anti-Dialer do?

Quote from Emsisoft: a-squared Anti-Dialer 2.0 provides protection from such programs. The integrated scanner searches all drives for Dialer programs and the Background Guard monitors the behavior of active programs for Dialer activity. The a-squared Anti-Dialer produces an alarm as soon as a program dials a connection or modifies the dial-up settings. The discovered Dialer should first be immediately placed in quarantine, since some Dialers manipulate the computer to such an extent that it no longer functions correctly when the Dialer is removed. Only then should the Dialer be removed. The user interface is child’s play to operate and has the same style as the other Emsi Software products.

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/antidialer/