What is a "Dialer"?

What exactly is a Dialer? What are the symptoms of it? I've been trying to search the internet for info, but i can't really get any straight answers

thanks

 

It connects to another computer and sends stuff to you. Kind of like a trojan or a hacker would. The most common are porn dialers which dial up and put stupid porn on your computer. Some symtoms are like more stuff on your computer and more ads even when you are offline.

 

They are trojan's that use your modem and dial-up connections to call out; Login to your ISP so you have internet access for various reasons. It could be to send information gathered from your pc to a server for use against you or to dial up 900 numbers etc etc. They are not nice..

 

so if i use cable internet, can i be affected by Dialers?

also... does spybot/adaware detect dialers?

 

If you use any kind of internet or anything you can be affected. But as long as you are performing scans regularly and are updating your system it shouldn't happen.