Micro Billing - Anyone had any experience

[TonyWarrington]

A friend of mine (honest!) contacted me a couple of weeks ago to say that he had had a pop up appear on his system with a demand for £19.99 payment for signing up to an internet service.

On checking a little further he believes that his son had probably logged onto an "iffy" site and likely just accepted logon. I did some research on the net and found many comments about this type of activity which would appear to be legal but pushing the limits somewhat. He did use the contact number which appeared on the pop up to "speak to an advisor". He refused to give his name or details and was threatened with having bailiffs sent round getting bad credit etc. Told them to find him and sue him if they could!

He has now received a pop up telling him to follow the links to download software to remove the pop up reminders and asked me if I thought he should proceed. I have advised him not to follow this link or download any software for the moment (I am pretty sure that it can be removed manually if I can find the info.) as I feel that the company is trying to get personal information to follow up their demands for payment.

Has anyone had similar experience? Is the software download ligit. or as I suspect dodgy?

 

[gcol]

I wouldn't be taking any notice of any popup requesting monies. I'd be using a program called hijackthis to remove the program that's generating the popups too.

 

[TonyWarrington]

Definitely agree about ignoring pop ups. I thought that Hijackthis was only a program that produced a log of what is running. Obviously more useful than that. I have now downloaded and will help him to remove this annoyance.
Thanks

 

[andrew299]

Its all totally innocent!

pay £19.99 and for the chance to win 10,000 Ugandan dollars,

just provide your bank account details and sort code and we can release the monies as soon as possible

 

[empip]

Definitely agree about ignoring pop ups. I thought that Hijackthis was only a program that produced a log of what is running. Obviously more useful than that. I have now downloaded and will help him to remove this annoyance.
Thanks

There is a neat 'hosts file' editor built in too, but you'll need to ensure that the host file is not locked by the likes of Zone alarm or an anti- malware prog.
Another page lists running processes etc.

 

[TonyWarrington]

empip, thanks for the heads up on this. Going to have a proper run through on my own systems before helping a friend.

 

[chessspy]

Hi, Yes, I had this, after 'a friend' logged onto a porn site. ~~ (shruggs shoulders)
It is a ba*tard to get rid of, I installed AGV a free download, and that got it, the software that came with the computer couldn't shift it.
Just download AGV and only use that, and give up, (I mean stop your family and friends ) using these sites.