3 Gigs stolen from account

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rumpletomskin

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On Saturday 3 December 2005, I realised that I couldn't use the ADSL connection to get on line. After contacting the ISP, I was informed that my entire 3 GIGs allocated to me at the beginning of Dec had been used. I hadn't been on line because I couldn't get online and it was suspected that someone else had tapped into my account and used up my Gigs. I reported this to the police and in the interim found out that this had happened to someone else in Joburg, linked up to an ISP based in Cape Town. If this has happened to you, maybe you should report it so that we can find these thieves who are invading our homes .
 
This is not an uncommon occurence - if your account is a standard re-sold TelkomInternet account then afaik just about anyone at Telkom has access to your user/pass.

Also just make sure that you have changed the router login details to something other than the factory defaults.
 
rumpletomskin said:
On Saturday 3 December 2005, I realised that I couldn't use the ADSL connection to get on line. After contacting the ISP, I was informed that my entire 3 GIGs allocated to me at the beginning of Dec had been used. I hadn't been on line because I couldn't get online and it was suspected that someone else had tapped into my account and used up my Gigs. I reported this to the police and in the interim found out that this had happened to someone else in Joburg, linked up to an ISP based in Cape Town. If this has happened to you, maybe you should report it so that we can find these thieves who are invading our homes .
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This does happen often but the people are not even aware.

Can you please mention your ISP's name? and if I am not mistaken your ISP can tell you from which telephone number your account was used, if the ISP can't Saix surely can.

It happened to me in the beginning of the year and I had to subpoena Telkom to get that information. (Telkom was my ISP at the time)
 
HellTel said:
It happened to me in the beginning of the year and I had to subpoena Telkom to get that information. (Telkom was my ISP at the time)
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What was the end result of it all Helltel?
 
Sneeky said:
What was the end result of it all Helltel?
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For reasons that I am not prepared to disclose I dropped the case and moved to another ISP ....
 
Gigabyte Theft

Well I hate to disappoint anyone but the ISP was not Telkom. I don't want mention any names because of defamation prior to a full investigation. The cops are aware of another case and I'm awaiting a response from a certain Detective who was involved in the other case, so that he can take my case as well. I also work for two of the top radio stations in the country and have already made them aware. They're also hungry and will hopefully expose this when the time is right.

Thanx for all the response.
 
rumpletomskin said:
Well I hate to disappoint anyone but the ISP was not Telkom. I don't want mention any names because of defamation prior to a full investigation. The cops are aware of another case and I'm awaiting a response from a certain Detective who was involved in the other case, so that he can take my case as well. I also work for two of the top radio stations in the country and have already made them aware. They're also hungry and will hopefully expose this when the time is right.

Thanx for all the response.
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Fair enough ... but mentioning the ISP's name is by no means defamation, you would not be incriminating the ISP .. but the ISP has to tighten up on security if this was not an inside job :eek: ... but at least keep us posted once the case is finalized .. if possible .. good luck
 
rumpletomskin said:
Well I hate to disappoint anyone but the ISP was not Telkom. I don't want mention any names because of defamation prior to a full investigation. The cops are aware of another case and I'm awaiting a response from a certain Detective who was involved in the other case, so that he can take my case as well. I also work for two of the top radio stations in the country and have already made them aware. They're also hungry and will hopefully expose this when the time is right.

Thanx for all the response.
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All I can say is Good luck! I've been trying now for 8 months with a simular situation. From what I've been told the subpeona was lost twice, reissued, then misplaced, then given to the wrong person, and now nobody seems to remember anything, yet a police station on the other end of the country phoned me to ask about my theft case, though wont give me their names and promise to phone back in 5 min and my case seems to just disappear .

I have more faith in telkom than our police service after what happened to me
 
rumpletomskin said:
Well I hate to disappoint anyone but the ISP was not Telkom. I don't want mention any names because of defamation prior to a full investigation. The cops are aware of another case and I'm awaiting a response from a certain Detective who was involved in the other case, so that he can take my case as well. I also work for two of the top radio stations in the country and have already made them aware. They're also hungry and will hopefully expose this when the time is right.

Thanx for all the response.
Click to expand...
Do the police actually know what the internet is? And Im not joking on this one, Im dead serious or should I say "see-ree-yaas"!
 
Happened to me a few months back (on TelkomInternet). (I was just told that I should 'change my password' to prevent it happening again but that's a joke because I *had* just changed my password when it happened.) Telkom has been known to be leaking passwords for *years* now but they just allow it to happen. (Imagine the banks allowed peoples' Internet banking details to 'leak' all the time for years too.)
 
sunsoffun said:
Do the police actually know what the internet is? And Im not joking on this one, Im dead serious or should I say "see-ree-yaas"!
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Ahh well funny you should mention that. The first time I went to report the case to the police station, It took me 3 days! Yes 3 days!

1st day I spent 2 hours trying to explain the situation to somebody who could not understand the documents telkom had given me to give to the police
2nd day I walked in saw the same guy.. walked out.
3rd day I found somebody else, it again took me 2 hours, but I finally was able to explain that the theft had taken place on this thing called the internet which the officer was really interested in and wondered what would happen next.

It was only 4 weeks later btw when the investigating officer actually got around to see the clerk of the court that "they" found out I was not the only person in SA with a simular case.. Now if only the police would tell me where my case file has disappeared to...
 
Stolen 3 Gigs

Could all of you who have experienced this theft, please let me have your contact details so that our investigative journalist can contact you for your individual stories. We're hopefully going to make headlines once again.
You can e-mail me at [email protected]

Thanx again
 
I've had almost 8GB of unshaped (R125/GB) bandwidth stolen from over the course of this month. The first time my account details were leaked all my prepaid GB were used and I went down to -1.5GB. So not only did I lose out on a fair number of GB but I was also forced to pay for my negative balance.

Following this I changed my account password and the password on my router. I'm using Nod32 so I assume I wouldn't have any trojans that could somehow get my password. I also run Trend Micro Housecall for good measure. I came up clean.

Well it seems that someone got hold of my new details and got my account into a negative balance, again. I'm now sitting at -3.2GB. Using the SAIX ADSL Stats Analyser software I was able to see that there were 2-3 concurrent users on the account during the high usage times.

I have canceled my Webafrica prepaid account to prevent any further costs. I would like to take it up with the police. As far as I'm aware telkom can fairly easily identify the telephone numbers of the people that connect to your account. I am worried that following this up would just be one huge waste of time but I suppose for almost R1000 worth of bandwidth it would be worth it to at least try.
 
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I think you should take legal action. You have full right. Firstly, it does not matter what your password was. The point is that they were trying to hack into your account in the first place and cost you a fortune.

Although, all things considered, if you can afford 1000 rand, and you do not want to go through a lot of trouble (and I imagine it will be) then you don't HAVE to. Talk you your..."former" ISP first. Maybe they can advise you in the right direction.
 
If you feel your account with us was compromised it is always essential you contact us and get the relevant people to take a look. If we can identify that, yes, there was another connection (and we have this ability), and we can see that the usage is coming from that connection, we can simply block that ADSL line from ever using our service. Preventing any future breaches from the same person.

We have had that situation in the past, have notified SAIX, and have put a permanent blacklist on that line on our server(s) - needless to say that individual has never gotten back in.
 
Just to keep everyone up to date, I have identified an additional two lines accessing GPriday's account, and have subsequently blocked those lines as well. We have also credited his account with the 8GB of prepaid he lost.

I would however suggest changing your password yet again, as clearly your details have been compromised. I would suggest something a little stronger than your current one.
 
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