Virgin tech support looking at my network remotely

stevejazzx

Hope this post is in right location

Just curious perhaps someone can elucidate

Had a really old UPC modem Thompson from 8 years
Anyways wifi (bandwidth and coverage) on it has always been sub par

Finally called Virgin today to ask for a replacement
First guy made me do all the usual steps etc reboot etc.
Agreed modem didn't seem right - i told him the age of it etc
Set up engineer visit - yawn...

Then i get a phone call from a different tech guy at Virgin - very nice guy
Said hes checked my modem and its very old (I of course advised this at the beginning of the 1st call)
Said he was going to send a new modem via post
All good

Then...he says 'oh and I see you've got a wireless netgear device'
I said no that's actually a NAS

Now Im wondering how are these techs looking at my lan devices remotely in enough detail to discover manufacturer names etc
Obviously if they can do that they can potentially access those devices
Seems incredibly insecure?

Is this normal access level for ISP?

Steve

ED E

Perfectly normal, its called pinhole management.

When properly implemented (mostly is nowadays) only the CPE management server in the ISP can activate access so its quite secure.

stevejazzx

ED E wrote: »

Perfectly normal, its called pinhole management.

When properly implemented (mostly is nowadays) only the CPE management server in the ISP can activate access so its quite secure.

Ah ok

Just seemed very casual
Surely the legalities on this are a bit vague re privacy laws etc.?
I know somewhere buried in the small print of the contract might be some implied consensus but I would love to know the technicalities of the whats legal and not about this kind of access.

ED E

Its in noway forced upon you. With most xDSL units it can be turned off by the subscriber.

With cable its a little different as the modem is provisioned with some controls that are in the central office in other setups so they dont really let you kick them out but the Hub3.0 supports bridging which totally isolates them from your LAN.

They could be able to see the MAC address of the unit, from which you can determine the manufacturer.

I'm guessing you have the combination of the old SA EPC2203 cable modem and Netgear router that they gave out in the NTL/early UPC days.

stevejazzx

Karsini wrote: »

They could be able to see the MAC address of the unit, from which you can determine the manufacturer.

I'm guessing you have the combination of the old SA EPC2203 cable modem and Netgear router that they gave out in the NTL/early UPC days.

Thats what I
But I then google'd the mac of my nas and nothing?
Think I'lll be separating my network going forward - don't like the idea of Virgin being able to look at my lan
they also factory defaulted my modem remotely, lucky i didn't have a tonne of settings and port forwarding etc set up - very annoying.