BT Internet usage problem

A friend who uses BT Internet, has experienced a significant increase in the recorded broadband usage over last weekend.

We cannot explain this increase and BT Internet Support are unable to suggest a cause, recommends a daily check.

Has anyone experienced an unexplainable increase in usage?

Regards....

Is there an unsecure wireless connection? Or has it been hacked?

How much extra compared to a normal weekend?

Could this be caused by a ntp amplification ddos attack?

Any data going to the WAN interface will count, so depends on how much data is being thrown at the connection.

Wireless : Router does not provide wireless connection.

Abnormal data increase : About 6GB

An attack : Possibly. Just returned from South Africa, where Webmail was
used. Password changed since.

BT Support not very helpful and I wondered if there was experience in BT usage errors.

Regards

Accessing webmail should not have compromised your connection even if your password was hacked. It would be almost impossible to match your email address to a specific IP address for your house.

6GB - did you upload or download any photographs either in SA or when home?

Yes could be a camera/phone is now furiously backing up photos to OneDrive, DropBox, Picasa, flickr and you've forgotten about it.

Thank you very much MHC. Your comment is most reassuring.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Yes could be a camera/phone is now furiously backing up photos to OneDrive, DropBox, Picasa, flickr and you've forgotten about it.

During the questionable period, about 230 jpeg images were downloaded from a camera into Picasa. I reckoned these were, say, 5MB each, ie say 1.25GB. However, surely this did not involve the internet connection. Is not Picasa on the PC and the images stored on the PC, too?

My friend and BT believes that an Acronis back up during the period was a cause. However, this is a normal, regular procedure and does not include backing up to a "Cloud" server, only an external hard drive. Furthermore, the volume of back up data would have swamped the usage allowance very many times over, not just 6GB!

I guess it must have been something to do with the images, but 6GB increase? Very odd!

Regards...

You can certainly save images on the Picasa servers. You upload the images and it is likely to then display them for you so you will be downloading the image you have uploaded so suddenly your 1.25GB becomes 2.5GB. Possibly sync'ing between PC and online Picasa?

One way to test it out.

Go and take 10 images ... get the PC running with Task Manager open showing the Networking Tab. Connect the camera or card and then allow the images to be copied off the camera or card. You will see any network traffic from your PC.

Many thanks MHC. The test using Task Manager is brilliant! I'll try that tomorrow when I'm at my friend's again.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Accessing webmail should not have compromised your connection even if your password was hacked. It would be almost impossible to match your email address to a specific IP address for your house.

On second thoughts re the security of a BT Internet email address, the Username is shown and, of course, the ISP. So surely a Hacker only requires the password to access the Account?

Regards....

Yes, they can access the account but how would they create any traffic on the connection?

Picasa is a cloud based storage system ran by Google, so probably were the data was used.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Yes, they can access the account but how would they create any traffic on the connection?

I see, MHC, thank you so much for your help and patience.

I think it is now fairly obvious that the problem was generated by the use of Picasa. I will verify using your suggested Task Manager tomorrow.

Regards...

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Picasa is a cloud based storage system ran by Google, so probably were the data was used.

Many thanks, MrSaffron, It is fairly clear that the high usage was incurred by the images and Picasa, perhaps accompanied by some ignorance of the facts!

I use Lightroom and Photoshop, so I was unaware that, using Picasa, the downloading of images to the PC incurred the uploading of them to Picasa!

Regards.....

Is this the Picasa auto-backup/upload we're talking about?

I've just gone into Picasa, don't use it very often and let it update itself. After which it asked me about backing up. I said not now but browsing the various menus I can find no way of telling it never.

So will it continue to pester me?

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

So will it continue to pester me?

Only if its logged into a Google account.

I use Picasa but have never logged into a Google account within the program, so all the online libraries and upload options are greyed out.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Is this the Picasa auto-backup/upload we're talking about?

I'm very sorry Cheshire Man, I'm obviously not a Picasa user, although I know it's a favoured program. Perhaps your query should be addressed to the Picasa Forum. You can Google it!

Regards