Dialpad.com, legitimate or data stealer?

Larry: A friend of mine has been using DialPad to
call into the USA. Before that, he was using Net2Phone, which charges for their service. I think DialPad is free. My friend seems happy with DialPad.
Lanny in Cali, Colombia, South America

Hi Larry,
DialPad does what it says--free long distance calls--and also "private" calls since it comes in registered as private on caller ID. Be aware that it is ad based and requires dropping your firewall or lowering it to medium and setting up special settings-at least with ZoneAlarm. DialPad is not listed as an advertiser with Aureate/Radiate- the famous "spyware" providers.
Steve

I have been using Dial Pad on my XPT-T600 since December. My mother uses it on a Dimension L433. We both have 56K dial-up connections.

It's not as good as a real phone, but it works reasonably well, and it's FREE. It's good for long, gossip-filled conversations. You have to get used to the two-second delay. Not hard.

My mom's computer worked well on Dial Pad only after getting a Radio Shack electret microphone (catalog no. 33-3025. $19.99). It uses two AAA batteries.

Dial Pad works best if you are doing nothing else on the computer. I have lost connections just by calling up my e-mail inbox.

Just keep in mind that it's free, and the minor inconveniences won't bother you.

Thanks nilo. LarryH

Thanks Steve, you answered my question precisely. Thank all of you for responding as well.
LarryH

Steve: The next time I go to my friend's house I'll take Steve Gibson's OptOut with me and see if there is any hidden advertising software on his system. I do recall that DialPad is now the Home Page of his web browser, but that's OK with him. The last time I tried to use Net2Phone, it failed the Firewall test. Either because of my Firewall or the fact that I use the Proxy Server at my ISP. I probably need to suggest to him that he begin using a Firewall, but as you say, he will probably need to turn it off when using Dial Pad.
Lanny in Cali, Colombia, South America

Buenas tardes, Lanny, by the time I install Black Ice, Norton Firewall suite, Cleansweep and OptOut, I would run about 30% resources, not to mention the fact that all that information would scare the _ out of me.
Photo by Lawrence
LawrenceH

Thanks Steve, That is very useful. I too, do not use advertising supported sites except MSN and Hotmail. I have a professional site behind a proxy server that I do use. I might put DialPad there. I'm glad that ADDS is cureable. On some sites like ZDnet, I have given incorrect information which seems to work very well. My website on the proxy server is here

LawrenceH

Hi Larry,
A little personal observation, I run ZoneAlarm which doesn't affect System resources very much, OptOut likewise is unnoticable. The "hits" on my system were scary at first due to the shear volumn, you might say that it woke me up to the secret behind the scenes world of the internet. I decided to clean my system of all ad based programs and this eliminated the requests for connection to my system. Yes, there are the ocasional Pings and probes but these attacks are being stopped and this gives me pease of mind. You will have the bombardment when you first connect to the server occasionally and this is a residual from the person who left the IP that you were given but ends rather quickly once the sender realizes that their contact has been broken. I have been able to replace all of the ad based programs with other applications most of which were freeware also. As for DialPad, I have it stored on a disk but have not used it since the reformat and probably won't since I am firmly committed to the "NO ADS" policy.
Steve