Today i received a letter from my ISP...

Personally I'd be looking at another service provider... Use your friends computer though

Where in the world was this anyway? US somewhere? Was it a particularly small ISP?

reply to post by Now_Then

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Why? So you can keep stealing and not get caught?

Whole situation about software piracy is pretty funny. The corporations cant go after specific users because there's just too many of them. So they go after the ISP. Now the ISP doesn't want to cut us off, because we're paying customers. Now because about 90% of internet users are downloading copyrighted material, ISPs would be screwed if they denied service to all of those customers.

Now things might change in the future regarding this. The initiative known as "digital britain" is a plan to do away with commercial ISPS, and replace them with a single, government run ISP which is free to use. If all of the governments of the world try something like this, a publicly funded ISP which provides to everyone, it will put commercial ISPs out of business. And ensure that we get a totally filtered internet, where we hear the news they want us to hear, and think what they want us to think. And it will all be done in the false name of eradicating internet piracy.

Hope it works out for you. I will make a point to be extra careful when I work on other people's computers. I normally leave the network disconnected until I'm satisfied there's no malware that can spread to my own PC's anyway. I'll just have to make sure there are no shady sharing apps running as well.

With torrents (and probably other p2p services) it's not hard to see who's in the sharing pool from the client side. It's not necessary to "monitor your internet usage". The guys at MAFIAA Company X can load up their p2p client and see for themselves. Based on the IP range they know which ISP to contact. From there they just need to ask "which MAC address had such-and-such IP? Who owns the cable modem with that MAC address?"

The courts seem to think that's enough to prove it was YOU that committed the crime. I say it's borderline circumstantial - How do you know it wasn't a neighbor using my wifi? Maybe malware is the cause of it - I've seen more than a few zombie IRC DCC file servers in my days. We need some tech-savvy people to start writing laws that actually make sense in regards to technology.

[edit on 9-6-2009 by an0maly33]

Thanks, I hadn't realized the new Terminator was already available for download. We'll see if Qwest shows up over here

$10 bucks says your brother is playing a practical joke on you.

There is no way that you would get a hand delivered cease and desist letter from your ISP within 2 DAYS of you plugging in your brother's computer to your network.

That stuff takes at least a week or so to get processed, lawyers sign off on it, etc.

I'm pretty sure your brother is behind this whole thing. Check by calling up the ISP and asking them about the status of your account. Don't tell them about the letter, but tell them you are concerned about your open wireless router as you noticed some traffic going over your connection that wasn't yours. Etc....see if they say anything.



[edit on 9-6-2009 by harrytuttle]

Sorry. internet went crazy. Deleting double post.


[edit on 9-6-2009 by dedalive]

Wrong, if he hooked his brothers computer up to his ISP then his brothers computer could have shared files using that IP.

The whole thing sounds very fishy, the owner of the ISP coming around? THey are more likely to send an email (that is what my isp did when the Secret Service contacted them).

But regardless anything that happens from your connection to your ISP is YOUR problem regardless of who's computer you used at that moment. It is all logged.

[edit on 9-6-2009 by Sonya610]

HA! That'll be the day. Just as soon as they get some gun savvy people to write firearms legislation. What's a barrel shroud? Ban it!

See above :p

[edit on 9-6-2009 by dedalive]

Click here for more information.

Good God - just ignore the low life pieces of crap.

These (*IAA's) bottom feeding scum leaches are just using a blanket campaign to threaten litigation whether you're dead, old or still in the womb; they don't give two s# who they threaten.

If you think that's bad, check out what France have done:


Source

My brother also had a similar threat in UK a few weeks ago. He has given me permission to share with you a letter he wrote back...

Link

[edit on 9-6-2009 by PrisonerOfSociety]

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I nearly said something on a similar level..



Are you accusing me of something? Any one can check my computer, come over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, DC 20500... say George said it's cool.

thats why you guys need to use private torrents .... they are using public torrents to get all kind of people ... but the private they cannot control ... well, if they join the private website, maybe they could get the IP address form the leechers and seeders but hey ... that will happen when they stop all public content ... it will take some time

Nope, just came back from the ISP office, this is the real deal, but as far as i can see, things are not that bad at this point, i removed the torrent app and deleted all the files so maybe nothing will come out of this and things are cool

I think they did it like this because they wanted to take immediate action to prevent a lawsuit against them or maybe they have had a similar problem in the past and it turned out bad for them, don't know, but i am glad they handled this really fast so that the problem would not go far and bad.

And yeah, you are right, if the computer is mine or not, it doesn't really matter, as long as it is using my modem to connect how can i say i didn't do it? the computer is inside my house, as far as anyone can tell, it is mine, i live alone, so..

Yet another reason why nobody's computers but mine get connected to my network without being checked out first. A real good friend of mine had a messed up situation happen because his wireless was unsecured. Someone within range of his wifi connected and used his internet connection to download child porn. It was traced back to my buddies house and that is the house that was raided. Eventually things were cleared up and my buddy was cleared of charges but not before it cost him his career and almost his marriage. The moral of the story, do not allow foreign computers access to your network under any circumstances regardless of whose they are.

Yeap, a good lesson to learn today, and most of all, i should have checked the computer before connecting it to the network, i should have known better

Well that sounds really bad, i hope this doesn't go beyond what happened today, i can't imagine how it must be to go through something like what happened to your friend

[edit on 9-6-2009 by Kaifan]

PEERGUARDIAN blocks all anti-p2p snoops.

Do yourself a favor google download and install - over the 1000s of files downloaded never a notice due to my PG

wZn