Stephanie Merritt
No image available
/ 7 October 2004

Beware of (Samoan) ghost in the machine

Last month, Durban entrepreneur, Tracey Collier, was shocked to find her phone bill dotted with phone calls to Samoa, on occasions when she believed she was dialing out to a local internet service provider. The culprit was a "rogue dialler" — a spyware variant that surreptitiously loads itself onto your hard drive and changes the default settings that allow you to connect to the internet.