Streaming Video

If the unit is properly secured no one, no matter how close, will be able to use your MiFi. Double check that you have a very secure password using WPA2 and you will be good to go. Do not use Password as your password or 123456 or anything commonly found in the English Dictionary. The latest recommendation I heard and liked was to choose your favorite songs lyrics. Your password would become....In a gadda da vida, baby.....spaces and all! No one is going to hack that account.

Called service support because MIFI was acting up, after going to store and getting nowhere.
He was able to remove the charge.
They could not tell me either, what was downloaded, at the store. Said they could to government but not us.
I can only guess. A few people go up road on edge of our property and camp on neighbor's land.
perhaps someone did hack our mifi. I'm moving it from the west window area to somewhere else in the house. I had it there because I figured a clear shot to towers.
When we do gt on to account page perhaps we can figure it out and then maybe not.

down home wrote:
They told us to log into Our Verizon, account on line.Unable to log into it.

Why?

Good luck at a store. They usually don't know any more than you can find out online.

Wife and I called Verizon Tech Support. Got nowhere.
They told us to log into Our Verizon, account on line.
Unable to log into it.
So tomorrow, I'm going to the store where they told my wife they couldn't tell her because of privacy Laws etc.
It looks like no one knows what is going on or they are not interested.

wa8yxm wrote:
Two things I can think of:
Modern computers often have "live tiles" that can download data, And as someone noted Facebook and others can "Auto-play" on you. Many web sites do that in fact.

WAR Driving: Cursing around looking for WI-Fi Signals you can tap into.. A good hacker can get past some encryption schemes. by the way. Then you download your PORN on the unsuspecting host's Data feed. YES it is a crime, it is a form of hacking which (all forms combined) costs the US over a Billion dollars a year.. Almost as much as (Political comment deleted by poster). yet the authorities treat it as "petty Juvenal crime" instead of investigating, Arresting, Convicting and handing the hacker a bill roughly equal to the national debt as they should.

I am not certain that it would be things like live tiles etc even the Windows update for Windows10 is only 3.5GB. That is a very large amount of data over a small time window. I would suspect streaming data or downloads like torrents would be the most likely cause.

War driving is a real possibility, I forgot about that. That should be easy to figure out though if your closest neighbor is a quarter mile, I am assuming there is not much in between (including cars). A car parked at the end of your laneway would be really obvious. If you see that, try turning off your MIFI if you see any suspicious cars nearby. If they drive off when you turn it off, you have a possible source, try to get the plate and report them to the police.

I would however take the issue quite seriously, this may not be someone simply catching up on House of Cards on Netflix. There have been many cases of people using other peoples unsecured networks or hacking peoples networks to download/distribute child porn. There have been cases of it ruining the life of the home owner while he spends years and life savings trying to prove his innocence.

jcpainter wrote:

OutdoorPhotographer wrote:
Just trying to help - no online backup programs that would have spiked for some reason? Autosoftware updates might have done a GB but not 15.

I forgot to turn off Carbonite auto backup program once and learned a very painful (expensive) lesson!

Dropbox type programs can do the same thing.

I use the Watch ESPN app on roku in my bedroom. I came back from a weekend trip and turned the tv on and ESPN was still streaming. Apparently when I fell asleep on the tv a couple days earlier, I just turned tv off and Roku doesn't have an auto off. My home Verizon swears there is no cap. I haven't gotten a nasty gram yet but I guess I tested their no data cap policy.

Two things I can think of:
Modern computers often have "live tiles" that can download data, And as someone noted Facebook and others can "Auto-play" on you. Many web sites do that in fact.

WAR Driving: Cursing around looking for WI-Fi Signals you can tap into.. A good hacker can get past some encryption schemes. by the way. Then you download your PORN on the unsuspecting host's Data feed. YES it is a crime, it is a form of hacking which (all forms combined) costs the US over a Billion dollars a year.. Almost as much as (Political comment deleted by poster). yet the authorities treat it as "petty Juvenal crime" instead of investigating, Arresting, Convicting and handing the hacker a bill roughly equal to the national debt as they should.

These numbers are roughly consistent with steaming of Netflix or Hulu at standard definition based on the hours and data used that you posted.
As advised change the password on the MIFI, however you need to change two passwords: The first is the one you use to manage the MIFI device ie to look at usage etc. The other password is the WIFI Pre Shared Key (PSK), this will be in the WIFI section when you login to the MIFI device, this is the password your laptops etc use to connect to your MIFI. You should change both of these immediately and make them complex and hard to guess ie do not use your Dogs name.
Although it is possible that someone could use a directional antenna to access it, over a quarter mile it would take some skill that your average end user would not likely have. If your neighbor at the 1/4 mile mark is in IT, I would be concerned, if they are a retired farmer, I doubt it very much. If it is another neighbor that is farther away, it takes truly heroic effort, clear line of sight and higher end equipment to be able to get a signal stable enough for streaming once you get past about the one mile mark. The other thing is that my experience with using directional antennas over long range, streaming is not very stable and it may not be worth watching it under these circumstances.
A simple way to disrupt a potential data thief is that WIFI signal is very susceptible to obstructions. If you have a basement, try moving the MIFI downstairs, then they do not have line of sight. Also sometimes it can be as simple as putting an obstruction like a piece of tin foil up right beside the MIFI on the side of the neighbor in question or putting the MIFI in a room so the fridge or other big appliance is blocking the neighbor. It may disrupt the signal for them enough that it is not stable enough to bother with.
Also in many places data theft is a crime, check with local law enforcement, if you are certain that it was not someone in your household a crime may have taken place.

There should be a data usage chart on your online account. At least that will tell you the date and time.

I use our 3GB Data Plan VERIZON MIFI unit alot when on the road and we got bombed one trip with a bill for going over the account limit. Turned out it was the downloading of MS UPDATEs on our laptops. Since we always usually have both laptops up and going I probably got multiple billing for the same thing haha... We had to set our laptop for manual downloads after that to make sure it didn't happen again...

Always found VERIZON helpful folks to deal with... They didn't back off on this particular deal though however haha... It wasn't as bad as what happened to you however...

Right now VERIZON is starting a big campaign to make all of us grandfathered users of their data plans to start paying more for the data used to be inline with all of the other internet providers.

Roy Ken