Firewall feature should include?

Loon 'n' Stop, and other software firewalls, should incorperate dialer blockage as a standard. The current mindset today seems to be these nasty little programs should be delt with only by scanners, anti-dialers, spybot, and programs which already have a determined signature for the "known" ones out there. Simply this: many users are still on dialup and a scan is not going to avoid calls already made before it was detected. A real time solution is in order and logically a firewall fits this description perfectly.

Suddenly it makes perfect sense if we think of such a connection that a dialer makes in these terms...
"unauthorized OUTBOUND connection"

First: You probably did not want it to call out...
Second: It is from your PC to the outside world...
Third: It is a connection attempt through POTS (plain old telephone service) even though its not another computer but it can still do damage to your wallet.

A possable idea (will this work?) is to setup the numbers that the modem CAN dial out such as the local numbers that connect to your ISP/OSP. Everything else it will disregard! The other option would be to make filters for 1-900 numbers, long distance numbers, international numbers, etc. Basically any number that would be a chargable call. Not only would it prevent the outbound connection but log which file did it so you can get rid of it.

 

Hi MakoFusion,

I have never thought to that (mainly because i'm on DSL) but I find your idea very interesting

For instance in the options, we could have an "allow N° to dial" and that would be a great protection improvment for 56K users, I really like your idea.

I second that

regards,

gkweb.

 

There is such a program I just have now found that claims to block dialers from "dialing" out. Could Look 'n' Stop have a similar feature or plugin?

cFos

http://www.cfos.de/techinfo/0190_e.htm

 

Basically, a firewall deals with NDIS and TDI access.
To block dialers, it seems to me some other interfaces (perhaps TAPI ?) need to monitored, which is currently out of Look 'n' Stop's scope.

If I'm wrong and it is possible to block dialers through NDIS or TDI, then no problem we will try to add this kind of feature to Look 'n' Stop.

Frederic

 

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