Change your password & protect it with your life

[jake]

this is related to my posting "3 gig cap\do uploads count x 100"

Summary (rest is long winded):
Telkom employees are using accounts and/or giving them to their buddies - Beware ! - change your password NOW.

I was a new user getting my account acivated in june 16 (youth day).

I immediately noticed the usage was much higher than mine from day 1 so I suspected everything on my side, viruses netgear firewall the works.

Closed off june with about 2.8 gig. In july it got worse culminating in a total overshoot of the cap to 4 gig about 2 gig on the last day 15 june & I now had a useless but expensive new toy & bad buyer's blues.

It took about a week of phone calls before the telkom abuse department spoke to me surrepiciously via the call centre (not direct). They told me they could only proceed if I made a police case. After sending the police case number (another week), I got the logs for june. All you can see is each login & a port number. Judging by the total difference in port numbers I would guess the other ass...e is in a different city. & telkom says: if you want the name & address of that port number get a subpoena !. You definitely get the feeling they are trying to snow you with legalease. They also hint that password security is YOUR PROBLEM.

I then asked for & got the logs from June.. Lo & behold this same ass...e used this account 3 days before I did, thats 3 days before I even had a password 1 day before the line was installed, probably the same day the account was created on the system !. This can only mean one thing - an inside job.

So far I've elevated this issue to the telkom chief of security, the last I heard a week ago ,he called me saying "We are still looking into it".

Any Ideas on what I should do, I definitely want my money back for the month of June.

 

[loosecannon]

this is true as a ex telkom internet sys admin i know of this as fact there are also telkom staff that uncap the accounts once the cap is reached [very simple to do] ... im not prepared to say any more ...

 

[mbs]

So... how do you change your password without involving a Telkrap employee??!!!

 

[jake]

You have to do it verbally over the phone, which is recorded.

I assume this ass...e prey'ed on new users, thinking they are least likely to complain or notice.

What is also irritating, is that they force you go go thru all this schlepp to get hold of information that belongs to you !, It's my account, I pay the bills, why can I not see who uses the account ??.

 

[mbs]

OK, I thought for a moment that there was a way to change your account details without involving them (wishful thinking!)...

Anyway, you're right about the schlep - come to think of it, I wonder if it would be worth the effort to haul their arses before the courts in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act? In terms of this Act, all organisations must keep records, they must publish a handbook of what recorded details they keep, and the public can demand access to such records for justifiable reasons. Time to do some research...

 

[loosecannon]

simple use a different access provider


do not support these idiots directly

 

[mbs]

Point taken, CANNON, but my pocket comes first - there is no way that I'm going to pay for value-added services I don't need, and Telkrap is the cheapest ADSL deal for me at the moment. I can't eat principles, unfortunately, though everytime I use the service I get visions of multi-bux ending up in Nxasana's pockets...

 

[loosecannon]

hey concider one of those value adds adhereing to customer privacy and code of conduct of ISPA ...

 

[mbs]

Yup - customer privacy and code of conduct issues would fall within the definition of the principles mentioned earlier - whilst I would have more comfort from any ISP other than Telkrap, it would cost me money... So far so good, though, with them - but believe you me, I would be causing havoc and chaos within the ivory towers of Telkrap of a magnitude far greater than Al'Quaeda ever could, at the slightest sign of anything untoward happening to my account...