Data 'Leakage'

(this could be the wrong location, if so apols)

Have had notification from ISP (waitrose that am exceeding data allowance of 5GB /month) as a relatively light user over 4 years I've looked at the usage reports and according to the stats recorded we have increased our usuage four-fold since November.

Today to monitor activity I installed two applications:

AnalogX Netstat and Sha Plus Bandwidth Monitor

by tonight there was significant discrepancy between the two:

AnalogX Netstat: up 172.9MB down 304.9MB
Sha Plus Bandwidth Monitor: 1,148.41MB!!!

There is only one pc on the router, router is locked down to single MAC address.

Anyone offer any suggestion as to the discrepancy???

Run Spybot S&D, CCleaner and AVG Free before installing the above apps. All report clear.

Edited by deleted (Wed 13-Jan-10 22:18:38)

Perhaps you should try TBBMeter from this very site..

Have you checked the usage reported on your account page at Waitrose internet?
When I used madasafish (waitrose internet's provider) the usage report on their account page never matched the usage monitored at my end on a day by day basis. By the end of the month however it averaged out and the two always matched

Nigel

5GB isn't really a lot nowdays considering the sort of stuff you can do on the net. What are your browsing habits? How many people use your computer? Do you play any games on the computer?
I'm quite sure an ISP won't get the data that wrong constantly.
Considering the discrepancies between the two monitors, I'd suggest trying out the TBB monitor - It's free and you can setup alarms to alert you if your close to your limit...

TBBmeter also has the advantage that if you do have any queries there's a lot of knowledge and experience of it on the TBBmeter forum here.

Well an update:

Installed TBB meter as advised and what it has determined is that the usage figures from TBB Meter match Waitrose usage figures, however and its a big HOWEVER, it is showing fairly significant usage when there is no apparant activity on the computer and the router is locked down to 1 MAC address so there is no other computers using it.

I've run Malwarebytes and Spybot both report nothing untoward and a full scan of Avast also shows nothing.

Any further pearls of wisdom on this?

All of these applications monitor at PC level, which would indicate there is something on your computer doing this. Check the settings on the TBB meter in case that it is doing speed tests while your PC is inactive...

The issue pre-dates the installation of TBB meter, TBB just confirmed that the data matched, now I need to unearth what is causing the activity. I am happy that TBB is not adding to this problem.

You could try installing the free 30 day trial of Kaspersky Internet Security. That will give you a report by application listing how much data each one has shifted to the internet and that could be very helpful to track down the problem.

Regards,
Steve

MAC's are easily spoofed, don't rely on that for wireless security.
As your usage figure now matches the ISP's this suggest all the traffic is from/to the one PC.
Could try "tcpview" and or "currports" to see what, if anything, is connected on your computer.
TCPview http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb89...
You don't say who significant the extra usage is, could it just be automatic updates?

Nigel