Someone "streaming" on my router yesterday and today

[EmNetta]

Although Plusnet helped me change password and this month's billing ends tomorrow, I'd like to find out who's been doing this, and how. Any ideas please ?

Hi Emnetta

Can you find out more about what the 400 wotsits are. We're assuming it is megabytes which to be honest nowadays isn't a lot.

Plus almost more importantly what is the limit you have? That should be measured in gigabytes. Looking at Plusnet's website all their packages seem to be unlimited.

It could be that they can just transfer you to an unlimited package for next to nothing, if not nothing.

If it's 400MB then that's not a lot to be honest especially nowadays. My kids could use that in an evening!

We didn't realise our wifi printer was unprotected.

That was until the fucking students ( that is their official name due to their behaviour) tried to use our printer to print off a lovely picture of one of them attempting to lick her nipple whilst give good a 'come hither' look at the camera.

We have worked out which student it is

We now call her miss tit - I can't look at her anymore and DH gets the giggles if she is about...

Just back from Adventures with My Plusnet Account, which took longer than usual as new password was inactive and I had to use the old one, after six hours negotiations on Sunday. They've now send four password reminders, possibly five as there's yet more activity on Yahoo as I've not got round to changing loud pings. Yet more loud pings - I'll be back.

Two more notices of my new password - do they think these six compensate for not changing it on Sunday!

Apologies for being cross with Plusnet.
You're right, niceguy2, Plusnet do advertise unlimited broadband, but cost depends which plan one selects, and mine is 10 GB bandwidths. (Can't concentrate to find more details of last bill, as they're still sending more password confirmations, and I hate the noise.) I remember they sent warning email when I'd reached 8.50 GB, which was two days before month-end and after there were unexplained sessions on Sat and before 10.30 a.m on Sunday, so I don't normally need a higher limit.

I've just altered sound level, which I hope includes email notification.

Electricalbanana, you're going to give me nightmares - it never occured to me to use a password for the printer.
Would you mind telling me what I should do to avoid any unwanted pictures arriving via printer; never heard of this, and I'm glad you can both laugh about it now.

Help! Just checked usage on my account, which started 20th Jan, today, to Feb19th, and it's used 45.41MB, which looks to me like half the monthly allowance, but I hope I'm mistaken. Would someone please tell me I'm not providing internet usage for anyone else, as Plusnet didn't in fact change my password until this afternoon.

Emnetta, yesterday I used 882.72MB.

I am also with Plusnet and have always found them very helpful and very efficient.

I don't know about unexplained usage but I do think it might help if you acquainted yourself with the units and general usage guidelines.
There are only two adults here and we have the internet on all day and evening, but only for viewing webpages and sending emails, we don't generally stream or download or uploading.

Is your package for 10 GB? per month (giga bites not mega bites) That really should be fine, but a lot of sites have hidden adverts which automatically play video now and that can eat up your tarrif.

Can you tell us if you have ordinary broadband or fibre optic and what they charge you, then we might be able to work out what you're buying and what you're legitimately using.

Previous post does confirm the package is for 10 GB monthly, Enrique, usually more than enough. I understand that your own usage is much more, but doubt your account includes a much higher usage at a time when your equipment is turned off. I've also found Plusnet to be very helpful, but omitting to alter my password has made me change my mind.
It's ordinary broadband, they charge me very little and I do actually know what I'm normally using. I've no problem understanding English either, and don't need a total of six repeated emails, even if it is in lieu of an apology.
Actually, I do know someone who'll advise about the printer, just surprised no-one's mentioned this to me already. Stay student-free Banana !

1024MB = 1GB

45mb is a very very small amount of data. That's probably like just a few Mumsnet pages with lots of adverts! It is not anywhere near half your monthly usage. That would be 5GB :)

It's the size of a short you tube clip .

I only asked the questions as you seemed so unaware of the terminology and what you're actually doing on the internet. I'm sorry I tried to help now. That's told me

I sent a single 45mb email earlier today (work: PowerPoint stuff, photos and sound files). 45mb really isn't much :-)

I'm still sniggering at the nipple photo coming through on the wifi printer! I'd have been so tempted to pin it to the lamp-post/telegraph pole: ."FOUND: one photo. Is it yours?" Ours is password protected, so you need to set up the connection with each device manually before you can use it with the printer.

Thanks, Umbongolongo, for the note about MBs and 1GB. I don't think I've actually seen that before, and checking my account today, there was a diagram showing today's usage as approximately half - half what? Don't know, and I can't remember,but am relieved it's only a tiny amount.
I don't see any ads on Mumsnet, certainly not videos, as I cancelled ads a long while ago, but now I'm wondering if they're actually hidden.
The 45mb is actually about half my usual daily usage (not economising, just lack of interest) although of course it varies.

Thanks for all the help, but I'm still not convinced I've been using the internet while the laptop was switched off on Sunday.

The bar graph thing on Plusnet Portal usage summary is not very representative of usage as a whole, as it expands the scale of the graph.
The bar graph thing on Usage Breakdown for Period is more useful but only at the end of the billing period, as it only shows usage so far in the billing period. So if looking at that early on in the billing period, it will show usage breakdown but the total usage will be 100%. It says "total usage so far"

The 400 units thing, I wonder if that is in KB. Have looked at mine over Xmas when I was away and my router uses varying amounts of data even when I am not at home (it uses data to keep the connection active). See the image. In my case over 3 days it varied between 554KB and nearly 2MB.

Not sure about adblocking software/browser ad-ons... it may just hide the ad, that's certainly possible.

Nannynick, I'm stunned at the usage while you were away. May I ask, was this described as "streaming"? This is the first time I've been warned about allowance usage in the five years since someone helped me to get started, and I can remember being advised that my usage was about half the allowance (at that time).

I suppose I could go back into the account and check the figures again, but it's taken a great deal of my time already and I still don't know how to stop it happening again. (Although I've managed to adjust the volume on the email "watcher"now, finally got around-to-it, but other stuff's waiting).

Thanks again to all the lovely kind people who've taken the time to explain about usage etc - Mumsnetters are usually worth asking and it's surprising what information people will share.

It could have been your Hudl,if the Play store is set to update apps automatically then that could be the culprit of the mystery streaming.

Some usage by router is to be expected, its how ADSL lines work.

Plusnet does not detail type of traffic on a day-by-day basis. No way of knowing what the plusnet chart logs router activity as being.

You have changed the password so any traffic now is your own equipment.

Ignore it, if you get another warning email then keep an eye on the daily stats to see if you can figure out what may be cause.

I didn't set the hudl playstore to do anything, Chanatan, and it was switched off during the relevant days (I much prefer the laptop keyboard, so hudl's here while I can find something similar to my old laptop - and hudl was half-price with the vouchers, which were getting dog-eared).

Plusnet told me the "extra" usage was "streaming" on both days, nannynick, or have I misunderstood this too? Adviser had to explain this word, which was new to me, and didn't tell me it could happen while my own equipment was switched off.
Never mind, it's been a learning experience, and I need to spend time polishing-up a few more new passwords . This morning I set up Malwarebytes (I used to have lots of hobbies, truly), as couldn't set up "Custom" to check dates on mse, which was going to be my last attempt at solving the mystery.

Once again, I'm grateful to everyone for the help.

45MB is barely anything and if you have any apps on your hudle then they could have done an auto update which is what they do tend to do unless you have gone into the settings and turned the auto updates off. Browsing the internet would mean your using mbs but to stream a film on say Netflix would be about 1GB an hour.

I can see I'll have to go back and check on the amount on my account for Sat and Sun morning last week, as all I can remember is 400-odd for both days, which is way more than usual for me, however little this might seem to others. I've also a fair idea of my consumption of petrol, gas, landline etc, having a rather boring life these days, but if I'd had a similar spike in consumption of these items last weekend I'd certainly be howling about it.

Must go and lock the garage, as I can't help feeling suspicious about the neighbours these days.

1. I recommend you not turn the router off at all. Turning it off on a regular basis would make the equipment at the exchange assume the line between there and you was 'poor' so would make adjustments to ensure a more reliable connection (increasing some of the settings) and the outcome would be a slowdown in your connection.

Depending on what devices you have, you could just turn off the wireless (using the router control panel via the browser, but obviously only if you are connected via a cable).

Alternatively, and something a little sneaky, would be to turn the PlusNet router wi-fi off, but you could have a separate wireless unit which could be turned off without it affecting your connection to the exchange. Search Amazon for B008NVMVNW and you'll see a device which could be plugged into the router you already have. You could put that on a timer or just unplug it whenever you don't need wireless access.

Or leave it powered up but unplug the ethernet cable... then someone trying to hack your network would spend a lot of time trying to connect to the internet whilst the only thing they were connected to would be the little adaptor.

2. On any account with a data allowance, you can change one of the settings in the Plus.Net portal to limit (to zero, for example) how much you are ready to pay for 'excess' usage.

If you ever go 'just over' your 10 GB allowance, then PN has a 5 pound fee (for a further 5 GB). However (and something I think unfair) that 5 GB you have bought does not "carry over" but gets 'lost' on billing day, when all the counters for the month are reset to zero.

It has been years since I had the same sort of account, so sorry, I cannot remember where on the portal you set the limit. I set mine to 0.00 so I could never be charged extra for 'going over' the limit - with a 0 limit, they would just stop data transfers (with the exception of the PlusNet portal, to allow users to make payment should one be needed).

Thanks Network Guy, for all the advice. There's lots to think about, particularly the warning about turning off the router. I will have a look on Amazon, but because I lack any understanding about how it would work, I doubt I'd have the confidence to start adding anything else to the system. And I don't think I'm using an ethernet cable or wireless (blush). (Unfortunately, I only started using the internet while recovering from an illness which affected me mentally as well as physically, and it's now difficult to concentrate or remember new information). Printing this page will help enormously, I'm sure, and I'll certainly think about refusing any excess on the account, as long as I still get a warning.
It's really kind of people to give me so many ideas and so much new information.

Nothing to add, just want to recover the file which pops up when I click "Post Message", seems to be a list of music already installed

Please cancel last posting- mystery file didn't appear.

I've sent you a private message, and am happy to help over the phone if you want your hand held a little :)

I'd set the limit on payment anyway, so you can never be charged extra for that 'slip' over the limit.

One part of the usage when you (or in his case, NannyNick) are 'not using' anything at home, is because spammers and hackers can try to send data to any IP address. It's generally just 'noise' lost in the (usually much larger quantities of) data used everyday, and with 'unlimited' usage on so many services, would not matter a jot - unless it was a deliberate "Denial of Service" attack - when a single internet address is the target of tens or hundreds of thousands of remote systems, all sending data, until the computer / server / router / connection has a "wobble" and crashes because it simply cannot cope.

It's unlikely for a home user to get that, but the point is that's just the impact of lots of remote systems sending 50 to 150 bytes of data. It mounts up if there are millions of bytes to a critical level, but for a home user, a few hundred messages sent to their router won't (usually) matter, and won't affect their usage overall, but clearly, if you have a limited usage allowance (and I regularly use 10 to 20 GB a day so 10 GB a month is now quite small) then those messages could prove costly if you are forced over the 10 GB limit through no fault of your own.