Yet another reason why I'm glad I have a Macintosh...

If it's any consolation, the German government is cracking down on this sort of thing in a big way.

If it's any consolation, the German government is cracking down on this sort of thing in a big way.

How ???

Now I wonder if we are talking about the same things. These little pests attempt to dial a high-cost telephone number, either to some sex site or a dial-up per call internet "service", both with exorbitant prices. The German government is insisting on transparency and the ability to recover money from these people, plus making it more difficult for them to bill using Deutsche Telekom. In other words, it will be easier to nail them for fraud.

If what you are talking about is something like an eternal pop-up in a browser, but doesn't try to get to your phone line, then it is something else.

Yes, I am talking about the porn dialers...not popup ads and popup sex ads. Let's not even get into adware and sex popups. That's a whole other realm of torture for basic puter users.

I forgot to mention that I also delete the download from my Limewire shared folder. That's most important. It's not a "true" virus--in the sense that your antivirus software won't pick it up...to the person who asked about that. I did a download (always zip files) and scanned it before opening. A virus never showed. Then I unzipped the file and scanned it again. Then opened it and the dialer activated. This ONLY occurs for me after downloading software through Limewire...and every time.

I think that it's either set up like a virus, or it's what you are downloading...just it's being given the name of the most popular softwares folks are trying to download. You think you're getting a flight simulator, a SIMS game, web creation software...but you're getting this dialer instead. The average person doesn't know how to get it out of their computer.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT CLICK on the dialer when it opens! It seems no matter where you click to close it, that activates it to place a call. Use your task manager to close the danged thing. On my puter, I hold down CTRL with ALT with Delete (all three keys together at the same time). The Task Manager pops up. You see a list of all the programs running at that moment. Hi-lite the darned dialer and click "end program".

Then go clear out all the footprints the thing left in your puter. Security Certificates, temporary files, etc.

Lastly, change the security settings on your system: block the type of certificates (use a higher security level), and set active scripting to "prompt". After a period of time, you can safely put that scripting setting back to normal. You don't want to completely block scripting because a lot of sites you visit use scripts. Yahoo is one of the most popular sites you'll need it for.

When I mention scripting, that's what Steve is referring to when he talks about this thing taking advantage of Internet Explorer to run code on your puter.

I wish you'd have posted the link to the lavasoft thread, Steve, or copied the pertinent part into the discussion here.

And nope...I don't use Limewire anymore. It's not worth the headache with the dialers. I use many other peer-to-peers with no problems at all.

The german gov. is cracking down on this? I've never heard a thing about it except in here. How about this...LIMEWIRE should crack down on it??? Ummmmmm...but that would be a really dumb idea, wouldn't it?

There is no way you can blame this on Limewire. Number 1.Why would any moron download an .exe file on their computer,limewire won't let you open them in the shared folder window in limewire for a reason. 2.Limewire is not the network,its just a program,if you really wanna blame it on somethin blame it on the Gnutella .6 protocol. Limewire is not responsible for its prick users who have stuff like that on their computer and your prolly not even sure if your downloading from another Limewire user,it could've been from a Morpheus,Bearshare,Shareaza,Gtk-Gnutella,Freewire,Gnucleaus,Xolox, ect.Yes,the Gnutella protocol has more than 1 program on it if you didnt know.


p.s. This was probably only stickied to show you that .exe files aren't safe.Also goes for any excutable file...I know i spelled the last word wrong,you get it.

sorry for bein a lil mean on my post above,lol,jus a bad mood.One thing that might pick up the dialer is spy bot search and destroy.I know it gets rid of some dialers so try it

This has to be some sort of gnutella darwinism. goodbye

Ad-aware will search for these porno dialers and alert you to any spyware and adware. It will also remove it for you.
I think the site is www.lavasoft.nu

Good luck.
try shareaza.... www.shareaza.com for a real good p2p client.

i downloaded some 'full-downloader' crap last year, it was a german porn dialer once i installed it. it was from some jerk 'crackerbox' & i did a regedit for 'crackerbox' & removed anything with that name - that got rid of it. but STAY AWAY FROM ANYTHING WITH "DOWNLOADER" IN THE TITLE!!