DIALER SCAMS

Viruses and worms
1

Hi,
Does the free version of Avast detects those premium rate dialer scams or do I need to install anti-spyware software?

2

avast free or pro uses the same scan engine and signatures so if it wouldn’t matter which on you used.

However, avast is primarily an anti-virus tool and diallers don’t really fall under that category well, avast does detect some malware other than viruses, but you would be advised to go for multi-level protection and use dedicated anti-spyware tools.

If you haven’t already got this software (freeware), download, install, update and run it, they all work well with avast.

  1. Ad-Aware
  2. Spybot Search and Destroy
  3. Spywareblaster Don’t install this until you are clean.
3

Hi John,

Ewido is an excellent, free program for detecting trojans, dialers, etc.

http://www.ewido.net/en/

Its well worth having in addition to those suggested by David.

4

What I like about SpywareBlaster is it is a passive tool that blocks diallers (the ones that it knows about) from getting established, prevention is much better than cure. However, first you have to be clean otherwise anything on your system isn’t blocked.

Also Ewido only works with winXP, since John didn’t say which OS he is using I didn’t suggest it.

5

Windows 2000, too. But you’re right to qualify the answer David.