BTs so called 'Fair Usage Policy' is a scam

Lyds84

I have just received an email today warning that we have used 7gb of our 10gb usage and we have only been with BT for 2 weeks exactly. We are four students but there is no way we have used that much!! Before we got our broadband we were all using my Orange internet dongle which only has 1gb a month usage and we didn't even go near the limit in a month! So ofcourse I thought 10gb would be enough for us! I am sure that it is a scam to persuade you to spend more by taking out the unlimited package.
The bad customer service I received when setting up the whole thing should have given me the idea that something will go wrong!
I work for Orange and wish I had taken their home broadband because no customer's have ever complained to me about going over their usage. Unfortunately I was unable to take Orange broadband. But I will warn others not to take out anything with BT now! And will be going as far with this as I possibly can, legal action if necessary!!! This sort of thing should be reported to the likes of watchdog! If anyone knows how to solve this then do let me know!

ACDeag

Lyds84 wrote: »

I have just received an email today warning that we have used 7gb of our 10gb usage and we have only been with BT for 2 weeks exactly. We are four students but there is no way we have used that much!! Before we got our broadband we were all using my Orange internet dongle which only has 1gb a month usage and we didn't even go near the limit in a month! So ofcourse I thought 10gb would be enough for us! I am sure that it is a scam to persuade you to spend more by taking out the unlimited package.
The bad customer service I received when setting up the whole thing should have given me the idea that something will go wrong!
I work for Orange and wish I had taken their home broadband because no customer's have ever complained to me about going over their usage. Unfortunately I was unable to take Orange broadband. But I will warn others not to take out anything with BT now! And will be going as far with this as I possibly can, legal action if necessary!!! This sort of thing should be reported to the likes of watchdog! If anyone knows how to solve this then do let me know!

One difference with a dongle in that when you take it out you have no broadband, with something like BT if you leave your PC there is the possibility that some file sharing program, trojan etc. is still running uploading data. There are various programs on the internet that you can install on each PC that will monitor your data usage, add the results from each PC together and you will get an idea whether BT are telling porkies or not. Also make sure your wireless connection is secured in case someone else is using it.

I have not tried this but it may do what you want.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Bandwidth-Tools/NetMeter.shtml

Lyds84

Thanks, We have now installed monitors! But BT are terrible!! I actually spoke to them this morning and have found that yesterday we had used 7gb and today 11gb! Nobody even used it yesterday and we even switched it off incase someone was stealing it! They are very unhelpful on the phone and told me "I'm sorry you're so disillusioned with BT!" I feel like im a sane person in an assylum and nobody's listening!! They told me not to worry as we do not get charged until we go over the limit for a second time but I'm pretty sure they're going to say that we have gone over it seeing as we supposedly already used 11gb in 2 weeks! We only browse the internet, the same as we were ever doing on the dongle, nothing has changed! We do not leave laptops on for anything to be still running. Have also checked security and all seems fine.
We are all students and I can see where all of our student loans will be going in the next 12 months....to BT! They really should be investigated!

custardy

if you can,perhaps its worth doing a month only using wired connections
then if the usage still reports as high you can rule out wifi leeching

Lyds84

Sorry, what do you mean by only using wired connections? Does that mean only plugging it in? And would that mean disabling the wireless bit? Coz I'm not that technical! I have just been literally switching it off at the wall when nobodies using it!! So you can see how clever I am with electricals!

custardy

thats right disable wifi and use a plugged in ethernet cable
a pain i know but if you do a full billing month on this you can see if it makes a difference

Lyds84

Well I have checked with BT and they say it is all secure and I don't know what else to do! There is a password which came with the home hub, we all had to type it in to use the internet and it's not something that can be guessed by someone else (it is long and has a mixture of numbers and letters). Maybe someone could be using it when it is switched on but if there is a password then I wonder how! The reason I am so suspicious is because this is not the first time I have used broadband, I have used other companies with different usage allowances and have never come across a problem like this before and have used the internet twice as much as I do now. This is why I think that BT are up to something. Also the fact that there are other people on here with the same story as me, I don't think it's a coincidence.

Lyds84

closed wrote: »

Are you sure someone isn't downloading torrents, movies, iplayer, tv etc, 10GB/month in a typical student household isn't that much, you'd be better off on an unlimited package.

We may be students but are all girls so we don't mess about with online games or downloading films or torrents or anything! We aren't that technical and don't have time for it!! It's all just browsing, really small amounts. It's the same usage we have all used in previous households and have never had a problem before! There has been the odd half hour on iplayer here and there but surely that doesn't add up to 11gb in two weeks! Two of us haven't even been in the house for part of that as we have been home!

PeterinScotland

According to DUMeter my BT Broadband usage allowance is being eaten up by SOMETHING receiving 17.5 and sending 20 MB per hour even when I'm not at the computer.

It looks like svchost.exe is to blame but I can't work out which of its many functions.

I started up Sygate Personal Firewall and it says:
Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (svchost.exe) is trying to connect to [192.168.1.254] (i.e. the router) using remote port 2555 (COMPAQ-WCP - Compaq WCP). Do you want to allow this program to access the network?

The details are:
File Version : 5.1.2600.5512
File Description : Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (svchost.exe)
File Path : C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
Process ID : 0x4D8 (Heximal) 1240 (Decimal)

Connection origin : local initiated
Protocol : TCP
Local Address : 192.168.1.64
Local Port : 4291
Remote Name :
Remote Address : 192.168.1.254
Remote Port : 2555 (COMPAQ-WCP - Compaq WCP)

Ethernet packet details:
Ethernet II (Packet Length: 76)
Destination: 00-21-04-d9-7d-c0
Source: 00-0c-76-da-ce-40
Type: IP (0x0800)
Internet Protocol
Version: 4
Header Length: 20 bytes
Flags:
.1.. = Don't fragment: Set
..0. = More fragments: Not set
Fragment offset:0
Time to live: 128
Protocol: 0x6 (TCP - Transmission Control Protocol)
Header checksum: 0x4ab7 (Correct)
Source: 192.168.1.64
Destination: 192.168.1.254
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
Source port: 4291
Destination port: 2555
Sequence number: 747789382
Acknowledgment number: 0
Header length: 28
Flags:
0... .... = Congestion Window Reduce (CWR): Not set
.0.. .... = ECN-Echo: Not set
..0. .... = Urgent: Not set
...0 .... = Acknowledgment: Not set
.... 0... = Push: Not set
.... .0.. = Reset: Not set
.... ..1. = Syn: Set
.... ...0 = Fin: Not set
Checksum: 0xfa5a (Correct)
Data (0 Bytes)

Binary dump of the packet:
0000: 00 21 04 D9 7D C0 00 0C : 76 DA CE 40 08 00 45 00 | .!..}...v..@..E.
0010: 00 30 BE EE 40 00 80 06 : B7 4A C0 A8 01 40 C0 A8 | .0..@....J...@..
0020: 01 FE 10 C3 09 FB 2C 92 : 5C 46 00 00 00 00 70 02 | ......,.\F....p.
0030: FF FF 5A FA 00 00 02 04 : 05 B4 01 01 04 02 6E 70 | ..Z...........np
0040: 2F 55 50 6E 50 5F 42 54 : 68 6F 6D 65 | /UPnP_BThome

Note the /UPnP_BThome at the end - I had wondered whether Windows Update was the guilty party but couldn't really find any evidence after changing the MS Windows Update settings several ways, and this BThome things suggests to me that it may be something to do with BT's software.

The above prompt from Sygate comes up as soon as the Firewall is started, and the constant bandwidth usage on DUMeter at 40.4 kbps download 46.6 kbps upload (I think it's that way round) immediately drops to zero. I work out that if my computer is on from 8 am to midnight 6 days a week (say 25 days a month) at 37.5 MB (total upload/download) per hour, that would be somewhere around 15 GB usage. Am I right or have I got a few orders of magnitude wrong?

Any techies who can help me on this?

Kind regards

Peter

PeterinScotland

Incidentally, I closed the firewall without saying yea or nay to the above prompt. Bandwith usuage continued at near zero for about 10 minutes, after which, perhaps sparked by some particular internet usage of mine (or perhaps not) it suddenly reverted to the 40.4 / 46.6 mentioned before. If one does not do anything on the net or any other heavy computer usage it stays in pretty well a dead straight line at that level.

Peter