Bandwidth theft - procedure and contacts to solve

[Jacquers]

Any extra advice on detecting bandwidth theft? One problem is that Telkom's reporting sucks - it takes a while to update and sometimes doesnt even assign the right amount to the right day. I have installed netlimiter monitor to help me keep track of how much bandwidth I'm using - and I hope it's reports are accurate. To help keep my account safe I'm also changing my account & router password at least once a week - if telkom's website is up....

But even if someone is stealing my bandwidth I doubt that complaining to Telkom will actaully help.

 

[MFour]

this is all hear-say, but I have been told that there are people going around with lists of "hacked" uncapped dsl accounts detail. These lists apparently are shared amongst friends, who jump from one to the other every so often.

This is indeed a real problem and at the cost of bandwidth in SA (thanks Telkom) should be taken more seriously than currently is the case.

I remember reading a thread on these forums a whilst ago about actions people took after discovering the theft. It involved going to the police, laying a charge, getting a court order (or something) to force the ISP/Telkom to do a trace on the line that was used for the theft. If my memory serves it was an extremely lenghty and cumbersome process to go through.

Previous posts:

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=33221
http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=34423

 

[Pitbull]

this is all hear-say, but I have been told that there are people going around with lists of "hacked" uncapped dsl accounts detail. These lists apparently are shared amongst friends, who jump from one to the other every so often.

This is indeed a real problem and at the cost of bandwidth in SA (thanks Telkom) should be taken more seriously than currently is the case.

I remember reading a thread on these forums a whilst ago about actions people took after discovering the theft. It involved going to the police, laying a charge, getting a court order (or something) to force the ISP/Telkom to do a trace on the line that was used for the theft. If my memory serves it was an extremely lenghty and cumbersome process to go through.

Previous posts:

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=33221
http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=34423

One again... It wasn't me ... IT's All Rumours !!!!

 

[wajason]

Hi Guys ,

This is the correct procedure for any abuse case, should you want to take it further...

You need to open a Police case for bandwidth theft or possible fraud. Once the case number has been issued, you need to request the Investigating Police Officer to get a Sec 205 subpoena made out in the name against Telkom SA Ltd. On the Sec 205 you may request the following

- The telephone numbers used to access the ADSL platform with the username: "USERNAME@ISP";
- The registered owner details of the identified telephone numbers; and
- the physical installation addresses of the identified telephone numbers.

Once the Sec 205 has been issued, the Police Officer needs to hand the Sec 205 to their Technical Support Unit for delivery upon Telkom SA Ltd.


Hope this helps to make the procedure clear!

 

[ziglet]

Hi Guys ,

This is the correct procedure for any abuse case, should you want to take it further...

You need to open a Police case for bandwidth theft or possible fraud. Once the case number has been issued, you need to request the Investigating Police Officer to get a Sec 205 subpoena made out in the name against Telkom SA Ltd. On the Sec 205 you may request the following

- The telephone numbers used to access the ADSL platform with the username: "USERNAME@ISP";
- The registered owner details of the identified telephone numbers; and
- the physical installation addresses of the identified telephone numbers.

Once the Sec 205 has been issued, the Police Officer needs to hand the Sec 205 to their Technical Support Unit for delivery upon Telkom SA Ltd.


Hope this helps to make the procedure clear!

Has anyone been successful in actually getting this info out of telkom / refunded for lost bandwidth / loss of income?

 

[Freaksta]

I know of people that have had the police at there door.... So ye telkom will give away the info

 

[MrSmith]

Has anyone been successful in actually getting this info out of telkom / refunded for lost bandwidth / loss of income?

Dude check out this thread http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=54744

 

[saffakanera]

Yea i remember a buddy of mine saying, dont worry i have like a thousand isp's, when i cautioned him about using my cap. truth is he had...wow...scary stuff... i wont use it, i must say i pirate games but ill never steal bandwidth, thats just criminal.

 

[Arcadies]

saffakanera : the diffrence is? maybe its just abit more close to home ;/

 

[ech@]

This is absolutely ridiculous, do you people forget that this is South Africa...
Not even in the states do the police or judicial system really bother about bandwidth theft, u think our system is really gonna care.
Honestly, if u think that your bandwidth theft is such a crime go and take a hard look at the real crime that needs to be dealt with in SA.
There r so many murderers, rapists running free, our cops can barely catch them.

Who in their right mind really sees our police force understanding wireless networking technology, sitting hunting users in a special police van with a notebook and wifi antennas.
Come on
our system has bigger problems on its hands.

The only solution is uncapped as a standard, the fact that we have a limit is ludicrous, its more means for companies like telcom to screw us out of a buck. I mean most countries in the world would laugh at the thought. We really cant be taken seriously on a technical level internationally with such services

 

[MFour]

So ech@ are you saying that "petty crime" should be dismissed and only the "heavy crime" should be policed? Ridiculous comment, it is because of this kind of attitude that things are esculating out of control. It's ok to run a stop sign, it's ok to break the speed limit, it's ok to steel bandwidth, and then when you get caught you probably will tell the police the same thing - why are you arresting me, I only committed a "petty crime" you should spend your time and efforts on the "big cimes".

Bha!

 

[ech@]

No not at all, If anything I know that this is one of the biggest problems with our judicial system, no consequence to criminal actions. U get caught drunk driving, give them a bribe and ur on ur way. whd kind of system is that.

But at the same time our police force is such a mess do u really want them wasting their time chasing ppl stealing wifi, then catching serious criminals.
Crime is not something that should b looked at as one crime is not as bad as another crime.
Crime is just that CRIME, it should all be delt with no matter what it is.
Unfortunately, wht a lot of ppl dont get is that we live in, umm wait, AFRICA...
Not Europe, not America, not Australia.
We are the only continent in the world that is comprised of only 3rd world nations. People forget that, people here desperately want to live and act like we are European.

True I agree with you you cant just let these people stealing wireless do wht they want.
But taking action with the police or any other form of the judicial system is just like thinking you are living on another planet.

The only way this issue is going to be resolved is if Uncapped internet is standardized. Thats it, treat the problem at its source.
Why do these people steal bandwidth, bcus we are limited to how much we can have.
I see no other solution to the problem, implementing better security just means they will find another way. Besides the average user dosnt want to be bothered with all this technical security crap.

This is my opinion take it how you will, but im not advocating theft or criminals.

 

[lvdm1]

I do not have ADSL but a dialup modem.

The following is a e-mail that I have been sending to Telkom for the last 2 months. They yet have to solve the problem.

Good day.

Please be assured that this matter is to be escalated to a higher level. I am even willing to go to the papers about poor support if need be.

I have been a member of the Telkom internet community for a very long time. As a matter of fact my first telkom registration was TelkomSA....@telkomsa.net. By providing that I am assuring you of my consistant support.

At the moment my reference number is online......@telkomsa.net.

As you can see from my references as mentioned above I have been n this game for quite some time.

I have been reasonably satisfied with Telkom so far. That is except for the continious errors I have had on my landline which is 053 ........

For voice the line is OK. But I have had continious problems that seems to have been cleared up on the line but not my internet.

My computer setup is the following:

Pentium 4 with 1024mb of RAM and a 80gb hard drive. The P4 has a 2.8mhz processor. The modem I have is a SAHARA 56k USB modem and is approved by ICASA. I am running Microsoft XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed. It is up to date. I use the MS inbuilt firewall and AVG 7.1 as an antivirus.

I subscribe to InfiniteCall and pay the R58.93 fees every month.

Theoretically this means that I can log onto the internet on a Friday evening at 19h01 and stay online until Monday morning 06h59. This is callmore time and I am entiteled to do so. If I can do it for voice I can do it for internet. I pay the fees and expect the service.

For the last 2 months I have been trying to do so but find that after about 12 hours of being on the internet suddenly my Outlook Express states various errors concerning the availability of the Telkom Server. Some of the errors I get are 0x800CCC90, 0x800CCC0D and 0x800CCC0E.

Simultaniously my Internet Explorer browser starts popping up with errors that it cannot find the server.

All downloads I may be busy with immediately freeze and that is the end of it. I can see that the carrier line is still active as the light on my modem indicates that the line is still in use. But I cannot browse or download e-mail at all.

I then have to log off by using the disconnect feature in the Telkom Status bar. I then have to log back on again (another call) and can continue for another few hours.

I have gone so far as to keep the system running for up to 20 hours and check it every 30 minutes but it stays like that until I disconnect and reconnect. I dont even have to reboot.

This morning it happened again.

I kept the line open and (again) phoned 10215 for technical assistance. This call was made from my cellphone. This costs me a lot of money.

The reference number that I received from a person by name of Liabonga was ........ (this constantly changes as I phone with a complaint every week)

Again! I was stepped through the settings and have checked this about 100 times. Nothing is wrong. Everything they have asked me to do is correct. But still I am forced to disconnect and reconnect which costs me approximately R8,00 every time.

So instead of having a service costing me R8,00 I have to pay up to R40,00 per weekend. Sometimes even more but then I give up and let it be.

I am extremely annoyed that something that I have been using for such a long time suddenly stops working. And from the questions asked by your support staff everything is in order. They ask the same questions every time and every time my answers are read off the screen but it makes no difference.

I have been complaining about this for a considerable time and nothing seems to be done about this problem.

It has been suggested that I disconnect my alarm from the telephone line. The alarm is NOT monitored by telephone so this is an invalid suggestion.

It has been suggested that I disable the Call Answering on my line. This has been disabled and never been enabled again so how can that cause the problem.

An investigation done by one of your technical staff quoted that the line connection is broken from my side. This is correct but what do you expect me to do? I need the internet but although the line is open and I am connected according to your technical staff I cannot browse or download e-mail.

I have been advised to move my outgoing mail server to saix which I have done. This also makes no difference. I delete cookies, clear internet pages and everything your staff suggest but the problem persists.

I have asked many times that this problem be solved but NOTHING from Telkom solves the problem

Now what do you suggest?

PS. I have had to DROP THE LINE AND REDIAL TO GET THIS MESSAGE TO YOU!

What are you going to do about this problem?

It may be suggested from your side that I have an isolated problem. Well this is not so. A friend of mine, he stays 1.7 kilometers from me, has exactly the same problem. His e-mail address is ?????@telkomsa.net. He does not use his internet as much as I do but he does a lot of banking online. He has also complained to me that he has this problem.



IT IS ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SICK.

 

[sonxEr77]

Two questions...

1. I get confused when it comes to who to blame for capping? I hear telkom name always rise up.. As we may be with different ISPs, aren't they responsible for capping/uncapping of bandwidth? or are all ISP's using telkom to control customers bandwidth leaving Telkom responsible.. I'm kinda lost here

2. What is the default router password? is it the admin..admin one?

thanx

 

[ech@]

Telkom charges ISPs on how much bandwidth their customers use, so say I download 100MB in a month, Telkom charges the ISP who charges us, plus their fee per MB. So Telkoms rate per MB might b 35c and the ISPs rate might b 40c per MB.
But generally most ISPs will make u buy a set ammount mabe 3GB or 10 depending on your account.
Which in my opinion is preposterous, we in no way should have a limit to how much information we can access.

as to the router it depends on wht make and model you have for ur default password and user name.
Marconi, ADSL/Router/Wi-Fi model user: admin pw: administrator
Billion 510G: user: admin pw: admin
Almost all Linksys devices: usernothing) pw: admin
most Netgear devices: user: Admin (or nothing) pw: 1234

It really depends on ur device

 

[MrG]

I was just sent a file with over 70 ADSL accounts that mostly all work. (Just logged into the usage stats on saix.net)

They are large cap accounts, TelkomInternet accounts, unshaped accounts, imaginet flexi accounts etc

The two people that sent these to me use these accounts on a daily bases.
Really scary stuff. He is certain they will never catch him.

 

[JungleFacedJake]

2. What is the default router password? is it the admin..admin one?

Most common ones seem to be:
admin/epicrouter
admin/admin
root/root

It is INCREDIBLY EASY to find open accounts like MrG got. Please see my comments in this thread:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=56774

It is CRITICAL to change your ISP (PPP) password if your router has been open and connected - not just your router password.

 

[sonxEr77]

Thanx guys.. valuable info.. Will try change the password, not sure how yet infact i've went to 10.0.0.2 address logged in as default but did not see change password option. suppose i should call telkom as suggested. Hoped there was a quicker way though

 

[sonxEr77]

Ran quick setup, managed to change password. Thanx

 

[JungleFacedJake]

Ran quick setup, managed to change password. Thanx

If you have been online, even just once, remember also to change your ISP/PPP password.