Could someone be hacking into our internet?

esuhl

MackemPunk wrote: »

Going to ask a obvious question, does your son own a Playstion 3, xbox 360 or Wii? If he does it could be the online features of these using bandwith.

Good point. Don't you need to connect Sky decoders to the Internet too...? I've never had Sky, but I seem to remember something about them needing to be online for pay-per-view features and maybe to check that your subscription hasn't lapsed...

macman

No, Sky boxes are just connected to the phone line by an internal dial-up modem, they don't need broadband to function.

mamazaac

macman wrote: »

There are loads of free tools for monitoring your data usage (such as NetMonitor).

Have downloaded netmonitor but there is something I don't understand. It is saying that I have sent nearly 44,000 kb since I downloaded it about 2.5 hours ago and received nearly 178000. But, my usage shown by my ISP is only 17.82 mb upload and 93.22 mb download. Does this mean netmonitor isn't working properly?

mamazaac

MackemPunk wrote: »

Going to ask a obvious question, does your son own a Playstion 3, xbox 360 or Wii? If he does it could be the online features of these using bandwith.

Yes, we have an xbox 360 and a wii, but only play games on them that don't connect to the internet.

Esoog

I'd say 90% chance its your son, despite what he may protest

Been there many times myself when I a teenager using the internet at home hehe.

You may not know what bittorrent is, but he certainly will.

mamazaac

Esoog wrote: »

I'd say 90% chance its your son, despite what he may protest

Been there many times myself when I a teenager using the internet at home hehe.

You may not know what bittorrent is, but he certainly will.

No, it is not him, at least not because he's doing something secretly. I check up on him as well as him telling me what he's doing.

Am leaning towards the theory now that is some application using it. When I went to shut down pc last night, got one of those messages saying did I want to force shutdown of something that was running, even though nothing appeared to be. Then checked downloaded amount and it was quite high again, though not as high as before. Trouble is, have no idea how to find out what is running and using this high download - can anyone suggest anything please? May have to go with esuhl's suggestion of a software firewall I guess, but can't afford to pay and the free one suggested seems like it may turn out to be too complicated for my pc skills.

mamazaac

esuhl wrote: »

Three possible reasons:

1) The page is set to automatically refresh. Effectively this means that web page will ask your computer to download a fresh copy of the page after a certain time interval (say, every 5 seconds).

If, when you left the web page open, the statistics had updated themselves automatically, then the web page is probably auto-refreshing. Very few web pages do this - usually only pages containing figures that are continually updated (like share prices; router statistics showing how long you've been connected to your ISP, how many packets have been sent/received, etc.)

2) Some funky script running on a page that requests data (e.g. you visit a video page on YouTube, the page loads completely, but then a script on the page downloads the whole video in the background so the video will play smoothly and you can jump forward/backwards without having to wait for that part of the video to be downloaded).

3) Other software running on the PC or your network. Your router may send/receive the odd packet just to confirm that the network is working properly. Your PC may also send the odd packet back and forth to confirm that it's connected to the router. The amount of traffic that will be sent in these cases is tiny.

You may have software that connects to servers to determine whether the software you have is up-to-date (e.g. web browser, browser add-ons, antivirus and other anti-malware applications, sidebar "widgets" that repeatedly connect to your email server to inform you when you have new messages, Windows Update checking whether you have the latest updates or Java Runtime Environment or CCleaner doing the same, etc.)

To get a fine control over what applications are transmitting/receiving data, you'd really need to install a software firewall and set it to ask you before automatically allowing any traffic.

Have just been sitting looking at netmonitor with just this webpage open and it seems to be downloading about 2 kb every 10 seconds. Would this be considered a tiny amount? I am not actively using anything else on the pc and have not been on youtube today. Does this suggest is most like " software that connects to servers to determine whether the software you have is up-to-date (e.g. web browser, browser add-ons, antivirus and other anti-malware applications, sidebar "widgets" that repeatedly connect to your email server to inform you when you have new messages, Windows Update checking whether you have the latest updates or Java Runtime Environment or CCleaner doing the same, etc.)"?

Ok, have just found out something that might give a clue. If I log my son off, the amounts of download/upload are barely noticeable, but when I log him on again it goes back this 2kb or so every 10 seconds. There is nothing open on his desktop, no widgets or anything like that. So, something must be running that is hidden. Although this isn't enough to be causing the high downloads at the beginning of the month, it could be that whatever it is uses a lot more when he is actually using the application, rather than it running covertly. If anyone can help, I would really appreciate it.

Sorry, ignore that, is now happening again when my username is the only one logged on. There is an option on net monitor that says "trace route". When I click this it prepares a report and one of the column titles is website. Under this are several gobblygook web addresses, mainly just numbers. Is this trace route something which is telling me the problem, just that I can't understand it?

spannerzone

mamazaac wrote: »

Have downloaded netmonitor but there is something I don't understand. It is saying that I have sent nearly 44,000 kb since I downloaded it about 2.5 hours ago and received nearly 178000. But, my usage shown by my ISP is only 17.82 mb upload and 93.22 mb download. Does this mean netmonitor isn't working properly?

178000Kb is 17.382Mb so double check the upload/download figures. Here's a conversion tool for Kb to Mb etc

I've never used Netmonitor but wonder whether it only monitors data usage on the computer or user that it's installed onto? so multiple users on one PC may not all log as one result?

Just a thought.

2KB every 10 seconds isn't much, could be something like MSN messenger, Skype, Outlook email or such like doing checks. could be some downloader software, Iplayer, something that shares files etc.

Results checked via the ISP may take a while to show, so perhaps todays usage won't be shown until tomorrow?

fenlander_uk

I imagine netmonitor is registering your internal network traffic as well as your internet connection. There should be an option somewhere to exclude internal traffic from the stats. If not, switch to a monitor that does, such as Networx.

mamazaac

spannerzone wrote: »

178000Kb is 17.382Mb so double check the upload/download figures. Here's a conversion tool for Kb to Mb etc

Thank you, but when I use the conversion tool you gave me (similar to one I used from google earlier), it tells me that 178000 kb is 173.82813 mb, not 17.382 mb as you say. This is why I am confused. If it was 17.382 mb it would be right because the 93.22 shown by my ISP was based on all day, but the netmonitor had only been running for 2.5 hours. But, if it is 173.82 mb, it far exceeds what my ISP is telling me has been used even for the whole of the day up to that point.