years ago this happened with cordless phones.......people would drive around with them on looking for a dial tone.......free long distance calls.

OK i am pissed :mad:

we changed the router to program our two laptop MAC addresses on sept 29th - today i get our bill and it shows the SAME download activity after that date as before!! someone is STILL hijacking our wireless account, how is that possible?? again another month of paying for somebody else's use of OUR account :mad:

what the heck are we supposed to do?

videotron is NO help, they said "sorry, the broadband is not our problem. use cables to plug your laptops into the cable modem". well this defeats the purpose of having wireless... but what choice do we have? i'm about to scream!! sick and tired of this... oh and two parking tickets came in the mail, at the same time. GREAT.

:yell:

TD, if honey and I are talking tonight I'll pm you with what he does here. He is a network administrator for a military company that designs flight simulators (high tech super clearance type of stuff -- don't ask me because it goes right over my head). Anyway, I'll ask him what needs to be done to stop this and find out how he prevents it from happening here. Let's just hope he brings me home something nice after last nights antics. :rolleyes:

thank you JM... we need all the help we can get! :(

i missed something... what last night's antics? :eek: i hope everything is ok??

Check my rant in the thread jack thread. ;)

Guess hubby's still not talking.:D ;)

Actually I just typed the book he dictated to me.

[QUOTE=technodoll;305070]OK i am pissed :mad:

we changed the router to program our two laptop MAC addresses on sept 29th - today i get our bill and it shows the SAME download activity after that date as before!! someone is STILL hijacking our wireless account, how is that possible?? again another month of paying for somebody else's use of OUR account :mad:

what the heck are we supposed to do?

videotron is NO help, they said "sorry, the broadband is not our problem. use cables to plug your laptops into the cable modem". well this defeats the purpose of having wireless... but what choice do we have? i'm about to scream!! sick and tired of this... oh and two parking tickets came in the mail, at the same time. GREAT.

:yell:[/QUOTE]

Hmmm well if you've done it right then no one should be able to get on your wireless. THAT said its obviously still happening...

I'm assuming you've checked your computers/laptops for viruses and such things? The only thing I can think of is that someone is downloading stuff THROUGH your computer (ie. I'm going into your computer through a remote manager and telling it to download all ten movies of Star Trek but it only appears on my computer at home (the movies themselves)).

I'm guessing that the 29th (ish) is roughly the rollover day for your bill? I mean you can definately download a lot of stuff in an incredibly short amount of time so perhaps this person did all the downloading at the beginning of the "month" (before you put in the MAC restrictions)?

Without actually being there there isn't much else I can think of...I know it would be a pain but you could try hooking them up through cabling for a month and see if it changes...

You could also try something called "logging"...you can make your router keep track and "write down" anything that happens on the network to a file (like a *.doc) and then go through it. If you could get it to open in Word and you typed in your MAC address under "search" and then deleted all the entries of your respective MACs you could then figure out if someone else is somehow making it on to your network.

If all your computers are turned off at night (say no activity on the internet/network after 11pm and before 5am) you could also check the times to see what's going on. Some of it will be technical mumbo jumbo but what you would be looking for is "DHCP lease IP 192.168.x.x to <computer name> <MAC Address>" during dates/times you KNOW you weren't online.

If the MAC happens to be the same as yours or hubby's laptop and you know for sure that neither of you have *touched* them during those times, then someone has "spoofed" your MAC (made the router think its you/hubby by "changing" his MAC to that of your;s/hubby's). At that point....I'm not sure what you could do...I can get back to you if that's the case too....gotta love techy friends.

OR you can definately go with Jesse's Mommy's hubby's expertise....lol I know when to give way before higher knowledge :)

Megan

merci megan!

i'll get on this asap tonight with hubby... as a precaution we shut our modem off last night and will keep it off until we're home and can figure out a way to bring these termites out of the woodwork!! :evil:

i'll keep you posted, for sure. :)

[QUOTE=jesse's mommy;305351]Actually I just typed the book he dictated to me.[/QUOTE]

Umm.. Is it a secret book? :o

I sent it in a pm. :D

So sorry to hear you have had to go thru this and you have rec'd excellent advice. I too have wirless at home and noticed that two of my neighbours have wirless that is not even encrypted or password protected. I ended up doing it for them but as someone said already, someone driving through (we tend to have a very caring quiet neighbourhood) could easily have used their wireless account.

Have you attempted to obtain the ISP and IP of the "Joe Blow"? I had one nasty virus attack one of my computers once - and we have virtually (pun intended) every good anti virus, anti spyware, popups,etc software going but this guy - who as it turned out had contracts for companies like Sears - had attached his %^$# to a popup and it was almost impossible to get rid of. I did tho but it was the most difficult one ever! I traced his IP address and emailed him and reported him to the BBB, if that helps but we have poor legislation re these things. He was operating out of west end Mtl as it turned out. But it would not hurt to find this guy because he obviously stole bandwidth and broke into your home, virtually.

i'm at my wit's end and about to cry. just received another invoice and despite all our attempts at protecting our account, IT HAS MADE ZERO DIFFERENCE. we are still being hijacked :yell: :( this has been going on for months now.

should we just ditch videotron and sign up with Bell? they offer highspeed internet? we don't have a phone line so... sigh. it's all so frigging complicated. Videotron doesn't give a crap and can't/ won't help us since we have a broadband router. Now the modem only has one cable output, and we're two here online all the time. the only thing we haven't done is get a splitter and two cables and stay (inconveniently) physically plugged to the modem for a month (about $100 worth of equipment to "test" this! :mad: ) then we would know if the hijackers are using the wireless to get into our systems OR if they're already in there, duplicated our MAC addresses and it's all so much CRAP!

i'm sooo tired of this... help :(

This is way beyond my ken, TD...I'm a dial-upper of long standing...so I have no advice. But I can't believe you're still having this problem! :grouphug: Must be so frustrating!

Nor can I believe that your provider isn't working with you to fix the problem! Not very good PR... :frustrated:

Hope someone comes up with a solution! :fingerscr

I have very limited knowledge about this stuff but was wondering if you could try satellite internet? My parents don't have a phone line or cable, so had to go with satellite. Not sure if this is what they have (or if it would help you at all) but it's one example: [url]http://www.starband.com/about/[/url]

I am by no means an IT expert, but, we do have a wireless router and did encounter the same issue as you (though with Bell we have unlimited bandwidth so all we lost was speed, not money...)

What I did was log into the router and assign each computer that needed a wireless signal an IP (or maybe a MAC address, not sure anymore) to limit who could connect. I invented the number so it was virtually impossible to hack.

Hope this helps, and hasn't yet been covered (I got lazy and didn't bother to read above). I can say that while the competition's service is the best, their customer service isn't.

You can have Bell high speed without a phone line.

poor TD :(

i'm only guessing here...but what are the cahnces of another router picking up from yours? Since there's so many other apartments and houses around you, would another not be able to pick up a signal?

You can hook up quite a few computers to a router in the home (i forget if they require a special serial number to work) but with some hacking i doubt another computer you don't know of can't pick up your signal.
Or maybe that's the way videotron works ;)

we used to have a router and we never had hacking problems but this was in a house not a building.

good luck finding your thief:thumbs up

Would any of the file sharing programs used to download music be able to cause this? :confused:

LL1 thanks I'll look into Bell, maybe they have a better service and with a new account we can stop the hijacking before it starts? :confused: the only program we use to download music is iTunes... :yell:

we've installed and ran the best spyware, we programmed the router with our laptop's MAC addresses and that alone should prevent anyone from accessing our service... but no. we tried shutting the modem about 20 hours per day (when we're not using it like overnight and during the workweek) and nothing has changed. we're just so stumped :confused:

[QUOTE=technodoll;345648]LL1 thanks I'll look into Bell, maybe they have a better service and with a new account we can stop the hijacking before it starts? :confused: the only program we use to download music is iTunes... :yell:

we've installed and ran the best spyware, we programmed the router with our laptop's MAC addresses and that alone should prevent anyone from accessing our service... but no. we tried shutting the modem about 20 hours per day (when we're not using it like overnight and during the workweek) and nothing has changed. we're just so stumped :confused:[/QUOTE]

I'm hardly an expert either, but I also have a wireless router set up to my broadband router. Mine is secured and so far *knock on wood* I haven't had any problems in over two years of use. Here are the basic steps I used when I had mine set up. I paid an IT person to come out and do it for me the first time and then had him teach me how so I know how to do it myself now.

*Use encryption. (do you have WAP or WEP?)
*Turn off identifier broadcasting.
*Change the identifier on your router from the default.
*Change your router's pre-set password for administration.
*Allow only specific computers to access your wireless network
*I see you've already hidden your MAC address.

Here is a great site with tips on securing your network. I apologize if this is old news and things you've already tried! Just wanted to suggest it just in case!

[url]http://onguardonline.gov/wireless.html[/url]

[QUOTE]get a splitter and two cables and stay (inconveniently) physically plugged to the modem for a month (about $100 worth of equipment to "test" this![/QUOTE]

TD, my computer security expert thinks that this would cost you about 10$, not 100$... am I missing something?

The bit about not broadcasting is something else we have in place here, as well as WEP or what ever. If you log in to your router, can you ever 'see' the intruder? What if its a billing issue and the service you are paying for is actually being delivered somewhere else (ok, so its a stretch but there aren't many other options at this point) ?

[QUOTE=mesaana]my computer security expert thinks that this would cost you about 10$, not 100$... am I missing something?[/QUOTE]

oh man that would be amazing! i checked and a 10-foot cable is around $15, we need two. hubby said the splitter runs from $30 to $50... factor in the taxes... sigh. I'll ask at work if they have anything on hand i could borrow first. and also investigating all other info, MUST get to the bottom of this... this billing cycle ends on Jan 11th so I know that we will AGAIN be hit with another high bill in a few weeks. this cannot continue.

[QUOTE=petfriendly]If you log in to your router, can you ever 'see' the intruder? What if its a billing issue and the service you are paying for is actually being delivered somewhere else (ok, so its a stretch but there aren't many other options at this point) ?[/QUOTE]

No we don't see anyone and Videotron assured me the downloaded data was linked to our account and no-one else... their customer service isn't so hot either.

i really appreciate everyone's help and the day something works, you will hear about it! :o

TD, he's telling me you need a better store! But even better, he'll lend it all to you :) I don't know where you are but he's on the Plateau (that's where I am right now too)

If you want it, send me a pm with your phone number and I'll call you (or I'll pm you the phone number here, as you wish).

are you serious? OMG what angels you are! :cloud9: will PM you for the phone number in a bit... first, am making hubby (who is more technical than me!) call the Videotron technical support one last time to ask how many IP addresses they have on file for this internet account, i mean they have to know where all this data is streaming to right? if they say more than two... then it confirms we have hijackers and we go for the cable test! :o

TD, he's telling me your premise is wrong... Videotron only sees one address, your wireless router attributes the other ones.

If you want, he'll go over it with you later (he really is a computer security expert, so I'd take the offer, if I were you)

Lyne

My router (netgear) also lets me name the computers I want to give access to, in addition to adding their MAC addresses, and it gives access to them and only them. If you've run MS Home networking, it'll get the computers named and you can go from there.
Doesn't your router have plugs for network cables in it? You can use that and disable the wireless feature instead of buying something new. Or you can use the built in Windows Internet sharing, its not the greatest, but it works and will at least help you troubleshoot the problem.
What about calling tech support for your router? You know how people used to steel cable... Maybe someone has figured out how to steel cable internet and the problem is happening before it even gets to your house?!

[QUOTE=mesaana;345687]TD, he's telling me your premise is wrong... Videotron only sees one address, your wireless router attributes the other ones.

If you want, he'll go over it with you later (he really is a computer security expert, so I'd take the offer, if I were you)

Lyne[/QUOTE]


That's awesome!!!!! It cost me $150 to have an expert come out to my house, LOL! I hope this works out and you can hopefully get this resolved finally! Good luck, TD!!!! I can't even begin to imagine how frustrating this must be for you! :grouphug:

I was having the exact same problem, only since I don't pay for bandwidth, I wasn't overly concerned. Then, last week, my internet was down to a crawl. Seems someone was trying to drain Limewire through my router. I have a Linksys router, with the downstairs computer hard wired, and the upstairs computer on a wireless Dynex card. I tried WEP, WPA and WPA2, and this stupid Dynex card wouldn't hook up. It was asking for more info than I had. I used the instructions for the router, I used the auto network setup from both Linksys and Windows, and it still wouldn't work. I called the cards "help" line, and after trying to explain for 15 minutes the problem, then being put on hold while he "looked into it", he came back on and said, "Uh, I can give you the set up help line number, but it is a pay service". "Uh, you know what? I'd rather pay for a good card than spend more money on this piece of crap".

ANYWAY...what I wound up doing was assigning MAC addresses to the router, so it only allows certain computers on, and also turning of DNS address (I think I have that right). Anyway, I told my router to stop broadcasting the name, and change the name of my network. It isn't fool proof, but so far so good. Once one of my IT buddies stops by, I'll see if they can set up encryption. If not, I'll spend money on a card with instructions not in broken english.

That being said, are you sure it is your router, and not a worm or something on one of your computers? I'm wondering if they are somehow accessing your wireless computer and getting on the net that way.

Oh, and your router should have a log file. I've been checking mine every day to see if anyone's logged on.