Toolkit

Story: Regulator demands more powers to fight rogue diallers

Posted by: David Wright (Friday 9 July 2004, 9:02 AM)

We had a similar problem last year in Germany, the illegal dialers made over 1bn€, but it is now illegal, although the rougue diallers are still turning up from unscrupulous sources.

They are also switching to foreign numbers now. And especially satellite 0900 numbers. In actual fact, they prefix with 0088213 and are routed via Telespazio (Gateway provider) and don't go over satelleite, but are re-routed into the normal phone network. (source C't magazine 2004 issue 14).

There is a market opening up in hardware devices that block the dialling of these "0190" numbers. There are also many software programs which monitor the modem driver and display a warning dialog when a rogue dialler tries to dial one of the "forbidden" numbers. (E.g. 0190 Warner, stopdialers - sourced from an Italien friend, they have had a big problem with this for years as well)

As I don't have a modem in any of my machines and I have never been had by a rogue dialler, I can't comment on how effective they are, but they should be easy enough to convert for the UK market...

Hope this information is useful... Perhaps you should contact Heise in Hannover for more information on the German side of the problem... (www.heise.de)