problem with broadband usage

Witchy.ie

Hi I hope this is the correct forum to post this in. I'm having an issue regarding broadband usage and I'd appreciate any advice.

At the beginning of June I received a letter from my BB provider (UPC) stating that I had exceeded my acceptable usage and my total usage for May was 484GB. The letter warned me that if I didn't reduce my usage to acceptable limits I risked being cut off or being placed on a higher package at an additional cost. Now while I felt that 484GB was very excessive I knew that my kids had been watching a lot of movies online and that during the month I had been uploading several very large video files so I decided not to dispute the letter but reduce my usage, which I did dramatically. This morning I have received another letter saying that my usage for June was 537.38 GB!! and that as a result I was now on a Fibrepower extreme package at an additional cost of 40 Euro per month.

My questions are:

1. How easy or likely is it that someone is piggybacking on my password protected wireless connection?
2. Despite being very careful with AV, Firewall etc could I be looking at a virus
3. Can anyone recommend a tool (preferably free) that will allow me to monitor what is going on with my broadband

Fluffy88

I have never used a UPC router so I can't tell if you can do this but, try logging into your router and see does it keep a log of computers that have connected to it. Then check that no computers other than the one's in your house have connected to it.

Other than that I don't know if there is software that will help you out there, most of the network monitors I know of are very low level which will show a lot of information that you won't understand and will be difficult to find the info you want. Googling "network monitor" and trying out a few tools there might get you what you need.

But one way to stop anyone that is currently piggybacking is changing your Wifi password. Some routers also support MAC Address Control which instead of allowing anyone with the correct password access it limits access to only those computers which you specify. It's more cumbersome but much more secure.

Sorry can't help track the usage, but if you need help in changing the password or anything I'll do my best to help

CreepingDeath

Witchy.ie wrote: »

1. How easy or likely is it that someone is piggybacking on my password protected wireless connection?

If you have no encryption on your wireless connection - very likely.
If you have WPA encryption - possible for someone who knows the tools to crack your encryption.
If you have WPA2 encryption - unlikely if you have a good password.

Witchy.ie wrote: »

2. Despite being very careful with AV, Firewall etc could I be looking at a virus

Viruses & Malware tend to be sneaky, and try not to alert people to their presence. They typically sniff for passwords to banking sites etc.
Unless someone is using one of your computers remotely for malicious reasons, but again they tend not to give themselves away that easily.

Witchy.ie wrote: »

3. Can anyone recommend a tool (preferably free) that will allow me to monitor what is going on with my broadband

UPC count uploaded data as well as downloaded data.
Eg. if you are downloading a 4Gb movie as a bittorrent, but leave it "seeding", then you only download 4Gb, but you could've uploaded at least another 4Gb or more.

The first thing to do is to ensure your wireless router is using WPA2 encryption, then set a really long and complex password on it.
Then download and run Microsofts Security Essentials program to scan all machines which use your wireless network.

ImpossibleDuck

Christ of almighty 500GB? Surely there's something malicious afoot.

God, I really don't know what to say, I mean I can't imagine that your family would have 500GB of usage in a month, that just sounds mental to me.

As for software, I've never heard of any...then again, I've never heard of this problem.

As someone above said, the chances of someone using your BB without your knowledge depends on the password encryption.

Definitely do a full scan with Malwarebytes, Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast!.

You could try to contain your usage for a month to see if the problem persists and if it does, you will know you've got an outside problem.

If you're on that really fast UPC fibreoptic broadband, make sure your son/daughter isn't taking advantage of the speeds and downloading movies really quickly and very often. They might not understand how much usage they may be taking up.

Witchy.ie

Thanks guys my wireless encryption is WPA and I already use MS Security Essentials along with Zone Alarm as a firewall. I read on a broadband blog that " and if you go over 250Gb with UPC broadband they will be on your back. In order to breach this 250Gb limit the broadband user would have to download round 1Gb every 3 hours for a whole month."

Source: http://broadbandireland.blogs.ie/2009/03/06/upc-broadband-fair-usage-policy/

If I'm exceeding 537 GB how could I be using over 2 GB's every 3 hours?

bluferbl

Try running a Shields Up (https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2) scan against your router. Never know, maybe someone installed an FTP server on one of your PCs and there's a fierce amount of traffic that you're not aware of. Kinda unlikely but ya never know!

PapaSierra

1. Login to your router
2. Change default router login details
3. Disable remote access (access from Internet to your router setting page)
4. Change your default SSID name (network name)
5. Enable "hide SSID" option if available
6. Set wireless encryption to WPA2 PSK
7. Set new wireless key - remember to not use a key that can be hacked with dictionary i.e. use "UpTheRebel!*%43_82" not just "rebel"
8. Save settings and reboot router
9. Set up your PC/laptop to work with new network settings (if you hidden your SSID then Windows will not find your network, you will have to type in your SSID manually)

10. Laugh at your neighbour who will now have to piggyback someone else's broadband

If you dont know how to login to/set up your router just tell me the model of it and I will explain in more details

have a good day,
ps

fionny

Jeebus thats harsh, under my computer and network (on the left) is there a computer name you dont recognise? Alot of people put their own name on their computer and it could let you know who's doing it.

If you are REALLY lucky they have network drives shared and you can get even more info on them!

Let us know how you get on!

Also the BEST possible prevention method for your router is to enable MAC address filtering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_filtering) if you give us the model of router I can tell you what to do....

Witchy.ie

Thanks guys, will try your suggestions this evening and let you know how I get on