[SOLVED] How can I see if someone is downloading off of my computer?

Raichi

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Aug 31, 2019
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I saw on netflix that it is possible to install a tower of some sorts that makes all the wifi signals from devices first connect with that (invisibly so we wouldn't know about it) and then to the network they intended, allowing owner of said tower to download data off of all connected devices.

I fear my neighbour might be doing the some with me for a while now.

Suspicious things:

1. When I start my wifi and access a site I first get the error message: Network change detected in my web browser.
(even though I went in cmd and put in the commands to block all wifi except my own)

2. When I still had other networks show up in my list his network would show up before my own even would, always with a super strong signal. EVEN three floors up but with a weak signal, but would still pop up first in my network list even though my own network has a good signal on all floors of my house. Creeps me out especially since I know he's a criminal and called the cops multiple times, but he sold them some lie and they ate it like a fat juicy donut. I am scared they are targetting me and are looking to harm me.

3.When I am on the third floor my wifi signal will first be 1 bar (which is his wifi strength since he lives on bottom floor next to my house, they are connected row houses so tehre's just two layers of bricks in between our houses) and won't jump to 4 bars until I connect to it, whilst before all this it would always just have 4 bars right away.

Please help me these are really dangerous people with money and connectoins and I'm just a girl who wants to stop living in fear...

Also..
One time I accidentally left my wifi on and my computer unattended and when I realized I ran to my room to turn off the wifi and I could hear the neighbour going "yyyeees, yeeeess!!!" really excitedly as if a download was gonna complete soon. And I immediately turned off the wifi and right away followed an angry disappointed "Aaaawwww!!" so that is also very creepy.

Also..
I one time made my network invisible from my router settings, which made it possible for me to connect with my phone, but my laptop and computer had problems because they run on win10 and win10 only allows us to connect to wifi's from the network list, but invisible networks don't show up there so that made it impossible to connect to it. I tried calling with windows support but all they can say is "restall windows" like that's going to solve anything >.>; What they need to do is make it possible for invisible network to show up in network list so long as it is my own, or just make it possible to connect from the known network list, because it's very silly that they have a "connect to network" option from the wifi list, but not from the known network list. POINT is that neighbour left the house very frustrated when I had my network hidden. When I turned it visible again out of neccesity bada bing bada boom he was leaving the house smiling again.

Please help me. I'm taking a huge risk just giving away all this info as they could just as well visit this site and see it, but I am just that desperate and scared :(
 
Solution
You can see exactly what it is sending and receiving by loading a program like wireshark. it will capture every byte of traffic passing over the networks cards.

A lot of the strange traffic is advertising. The worst offenders play video ads which eat a lot of bandwidth. They will do this even when the browser is minimized.

Ad blockers help and I run script blockers also but doing this many times will break web sites.

Note if you really think someone is on your machine the best defense is what it called a honey pot. You put a bunch of stuff on the machine that has fake names on files etc and looks very interesting but is garbage files. It causes them to waste their time on that rather than your real data. This is...

punkncat

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There would have to be a lot of assumptions made about this individuals access to that device, which is illegal to own outside law enforcement (now, not saying you can't get one). This individual would either have had to have access to your computer or a similar way to log or see your password. From that it would be easy enough to emulate your wifi (not saying this is happening) and cause a situation where you inadvertently connected to said device. These are sometimes called "Stingray" among other monikers. There are far higher tech ways that an individual could do this, but would depend on knowledge that it's highly unlikely the "common criminal" creepy time are in the know of. I guess it's possible.

I would suggest taking some time to change your SSID, change all your passwords, and set up other things like two factor authentication (and such). If this individual had access to your computer and could have installed a keylogger it gets more difficult.

I would consider most of this happenstance and you are likely being paranoid.
 

Raichi

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I actually listened in when he had a group of visitors and turned out these visitors were men he comissioned to make an illegal app for him, so it makes perfect sense that he wants to be a step ahead of anyone who is even the slightest threat to his criminal enterprise and hires tech people to look into it all.

I'm just asking for ways to find out whether or not he is downloading off of my computer. I already had my network name and password changed, are you saying changing it again would break the link if there was one? And would it be easy for him to just re-establish it since he has done it before?

FYI in the past i had left my computer unlocked with wifi on with the standard wifi name and pw that came with the router so it is very plausible a hacker got in and installed whatever without being physically at my desk. I ran CCleaner and malwarebites and I have windows defender, but a hacker could have made a way around those programs.
 

punkncat

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I am semi familiar with a program called Glasswire (IIRC) that will allow you to monitor and log all incoming and outgoing internet activity. It is possible that something like this is available via your ISP, through Windows, etc.

Not to be weird about it, but if you aren't seeing money coming or going from your accounts, haven't had any nefarious online access situations like spam from your email, or access/overuse of your service accounts and such (like blowing data caps), don't have a bunch of nudes or other info on the computer that could be sensitive it's likely not worth the time to dwell on.
 

Raichi

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Aug 31, 2019
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I got the glasswire program on both my computer and laptop and it found an IP that's not mine conencting to my pc for "hostprocess windows service" on my computer

I managed to track it down and it belongs to https://www.libertyglobal.com

I tried going through their site to see what they are about, but it's all very vague "improve connectivity and make technological advances" without going into detail what exactly these advances are or what they do exactly aside from that vague stuff.

On my laptop my "hostprocess windows server" connects to a different ip called ff02::1:2

Anybody know more about this please? :(

edit: I just now noticed this sam IP from liberty global connect with my laptop, but not hostprocess but CCleaner instead. Please explain to me why this is, someone? I have nothing to do with that site

edit: my phone had wifi off and yet I still got this prompt, what is that supposed to be? =


Also just now I was just watching some south-park and i get a pop up from glasswire saying :
settingsfd-geo.trafficmanager.net was a network activity with microsoft.photos.exe even though I did not trigger that myself or have it running for all I know.
 
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I would probably just hardline your laptop with an ethernet cable and not use wifi.

If you must use wifi, for your laptop or other device, and don't need your devices to communicate with each other, then I would get a wifi router that allows for a "GUEST NETWORK" and only use the guest network to connect all your wifi devices. With a guest network, clients are all isolated from each other and can't communicate with one another if they're connected to wifi. You can check if the guest network is working correctly by trying to ping each other's ip addresses. Guest wifi should also not allow access to the admin webpage of the router, this is very important for security.
 
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Raichi

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Thanks, I looked into guest networking and discovered that my router does allow for making one, but it doesn't give me the option to chose to go wtih 5.0 or 2.4 so I called my ISP to ask about it, and was informed that it will automatically use the signal that is best equipped for it.

So that is worrisome for me as 2.4 goes through walls so that makes it more easy for neighbours to get into it. I also asked about there not being an option for how many people can be on the guest network, or disallowing guests from accessing the main network, but was told as long as i don't give the log in information for the main network there should be no traffic between the wifi of the main and guest network.

So now I am not sure whether or not it is even more safe or less safe, since I was told that as long as I don't already have a virus or malware etc. there is no reason to worry about data transmission from my wifi.

Though I am also not sure about whether or not there is a way for hackers to get this without the ISP knowing about it, like the netflix example I mentioned in the OP. As my computer did randomly without me triggering anything or using any apps trigger a download/upload host which I found suspicious. THough under publisher it said: microsoft windows, but when I looked at the IP it belonged to a site called akamai so that's nice and confusing. On their site was info about safeguarding etc.

I just hope I am being paranoid, but if you had a scary neighbor who knows you know of his crimes and called the cops many times to try and bust him and have had tech people over to go as far as make a custom app for them which they even told him was illegal wouldn't you want to be safe too? If this situation doesn't warrant a little paranoia for my own safety I don't know what will.
 
ISP provided routers are generally very basic and limited. For the type of security you want, you should use your own equipment. If your isp allows you to buy your own modem, then you should do so and buy your own router. Make sure your new router can do WPA3 encryption. Older devices wont work with WPA3. But its future proofing for security.

Most decent routers will allow the guest network on 5ghz and disable 2.4ghz. Here’s how asus does it: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1042732/
 
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Wolfshadw

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Moderator
Don't know who your ISP is, but this is something that Comcast/Xfinity has been doing for a couple years now. Their modems broadcast TWO WiFi networks. The first is your own personal WiFi network where you set up your own SSID/Password/etc... The other is a public network where any passing Xfinity customer can connect and use. This is COMPLETELY separate from your own WiFi network and you need not worry about it.

When it first came out, you were able to disable the free WiFi connection as people said other Internet users were piggy-backing on your Internet bandwidth, but in truth, that's only if they're parked outside your house and really don't mind a crappy connection for an extended period of time.

If you're really concerned about this, just contact your ISP to see if there is a public WiFi option in your modem/router and if there is, how to turn it off.

-Wolf sends
 
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Raichi

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I am not very technical nor have the means to just buy expensive stuff. SO even if I had they money, it would take me a couple furstrating full-time workweek days to figure out how to get a custom router to work.

I notice that I am receiving lots of general advice on securing internet, but not really seeing any direct responses to the suspicious activities I mentioned.

E.g. I just now noticed again when I turn off my wifi and back on again the signal shows up at the strength of 1, and only when I connect to it will it go to the actual signal strength of 4.

I took a screenshot of what it looks like in my taskmanager :
I did it 3 times to have 3 examples to show you:
GBTO2TA.png

3Qidg1p.png

viUZGHp.png


As you can see it has two big spikes which I find very suspicious.
 
Apps by definition are not illegal. They may be used for illegal activities though :) Same for unwanted WiFi access. Most folks who do that, use WiFi to browse Internet for free without bothering about your stuff (had acquaintance who used neighbor WiFi for 2 years before moving to new home). Although things will change if your WiFi stowaway will do something illegal with subsequent police visit to you in end.

In short if you have suspicions, change your WiFi password and make it more difficult to guess (12+ char length and special chars inside password are welcomed), enable WPA3 or at least WPA2 (if available) and enable WiFi client isolation. Also you can disable AP visibility (will still be visible for people with knowledge, but will scare off kiddies). Also you can allow WiFi connections only for specific devices by MAC address - your phone, computer TV and what else you have.

As @Wolfshadw mentioned, if your provider gave you AP router with enabled guest network, you can ask provider to disable the guest network.

Maybe your neighbor did some other more intimate stuff with unexpected final :D
 
I am not very technical nor have the means to just buy expensive stuff. SO even if I had they money, it would take me a couple furstrating full-time workweek days to figure out how to get a custom router to work.

I notice that I am receiving lots of general advice on securing internet, but not really seeing any direct responses to the suspicious activities I mentioned.

E.g. I just now noticed again when I turn off my wifi and back on again the signal shows up at the strength of 1, and only when I connect to it will it go to the actual signal strength of 4.

I took a screenshot of what it looks like in my taskmanager :
I did it 3 times to have 3 examples to show you:
GBTO2TA.png

3Qidg1p.png

viUZGHp.png


As you can see it has two big spikes which I find very suspicious.

I can't tell you what you want to hear, I can only tell you the realities of your situation. ISP provided routers are too basic and limited to give you the kind of security you want.

Are you paying a rental fee for your router? Generally speaking, buying your own equipment will pay for itself in about a year.
 
Are you paying a rental fee for your router? Generally speaking, buying your own equipment will pay for itself in about a year.

Fiber optic SOHO customers often have combined GPON + WiFi routers installed in their premises by provider. Like one of Alcatel Lucent G-140W flavors which besides GPON have or 2.4 GHz or 2.4/5 GHz WiFi AP built in. I have similar device in my apartment. WiFi may be enabled or not - that depends from agreement with provider. I asked provider to disable this WiFi AP because I already have better WiFi router at home so I use provider device only as GPON. OP seems use WiFi AP part in provider device too.
 
I saw on netflix that it is possible to install a tower of some sorts that makes all the wifi signals from devices first connect with that (invisibly so we wouldn't know about it) and then to the network they intended, allowing owner of said tower to download data off of all connected devices.

I fear my neighbour might be doing the some with me for a while now.

Suspicious things:

1. When I start my wifi and access a site I first get the error message: Network change detected in my web browser.
(even though I went in cmd and put in the commands to block all wifi except my own)

2. When I still had other networks show up in my list his network would show up before my own even would, always with a super strong signal. EVEN three floors up but with a weak signal, but would still pop up first in my network list even though my own network has a good signal on all floors of my house. Creeps me out especially since I know he's a criminal and called the cops multiple times, but he sold them some lie and they ate it like a fat juicy donut. I am scared they are targetting me and are looking to harm me.

3.When I am on the third floor my wifi signal will first be 1 bar (which is his wifi strength since he lives on bottom floor next to my house, they are connected row houses so tehre's just two layers of bricks in between our houses) and won't jump to 4 bars until I connect to it, whilst before all this it would always just have 4 bars right away.

Please help me these are really dangerous people with money and connectoins and I'm just a girl who wants to stop living in fear...

Also..
One time I accidentally left my wifi on and my computer unattended and when I realized I ran to my room to turn off the wifi and I could hear the neighbour going "yyyeees, yeeeess!!!" really excitedly as if a download was gonna complete soon. And I immediately turned off the wifi and right away followed an angry disappointed "Aaaawwww!!" so that is also very creepy.

Also..
I one time made my network invisible from my router settings, which made it possible for me to connect with my phone, but my laptop and computer had problems because they run on win10 and win10 only allows us to connect to wifi's from the network list, but invisible networks don't show up there so that made it impossible to connect to it. I tried calling with windows support but all they can say is "restall windows" like that's going to solve anything >.>; What they need to do is make it possible for invisible network to show up in network list so long as it is my own, or just make it possible to connect from the known network list, because it's very silly that they have a "connect to network" option from the wifi list, but not from the known network list. POINT is that neighbour left the house very frustrated when I had my network hidden. When I turned it visible again out of neccesity bada bing bada boom he was leaving the house smiling again.

Please help me. I'm taking a huge risk just giving away all this info as they could just as well visit this site and see it, but I am just that desperate and scared :(

None of this sounds like any sort of hacking. What would they download off your computer? Have you had odd purchases made on your credit cards? Passwords changed, accounts locked out?

The message about Network change detected may be from all the things you are doing on your router and computer. You say you did something in the command line, what commands exactly did you use? You turning off WiFi and back on would cause this network change message also.

You can connect to a hidden wireless network with Windows 10, click on WiFi in Network and Internet Settings. Click on Manage known networks, add a new network and check off "connect even if not broadcasting". If you do a web search on how to do this you can find all the information you need without having to call Microsoft support. https://www.google.com/search?q=win...0i8i13i30l4.5881j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
 
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Raichi

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Aug 31, 2019
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If you are a criminal with a neighbour who knows you are a criminal and wants to stop you, would you not try to be one step ahead of the game by knowing exactly what they are up to on their computer?

I have tried for a week to get my windows 10 to do exactly that which is explained in that google search but my computer just won't do it okay? It simply refuses to connect when it is hidden even if I execute all the steps perfectly.

@hang-the-9


@gggplaya I don't pay anything because I have no money, I still live in my parental home.

@Krotow that is why I said "they informed him the app he requested them to make is illegal", not "apps are illegal". My wifi password is alrady really strong but I doubt that is going to stop a determined hacker who is promised a pretty sum.

___

Does anybody know if I should be worried if opening a browser triggers wifi Send and Receive data ? :( when I turn off the browser it doesn't send or receive data but when I turn it on it does even if I am not doing anything and just staring at a start up page of e.g. google. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like: V (means send) and O (means receive) =
dcEhhsF.png


edit: i just looked up and I think it's coming from mrt.exe because it started connecting to it this morning and that's when the sending and receiving started.


And get this, I googled what this file does and:
" Mrt.exe is not a Windows system file. The program has no visible window. Mrt.exe is able to manipulate other programs, monitor applications and record keyboard and mouse inputs. Therefore the technical security rating is 19% dangerous; however you should also read the user reviews. "


seriously what the hell, so they can see everything I type ??? so even all this that I'm writing and my passwords and log in names when I access websites that require me to log in?

nvm i looked up the file location and it's where it supposed to be and I scanned it with win defender and it's safe... Hopefully i'm just overestimating these criminals :(

Still I would very much like to have an explanation why my laptop is receiving and sending a rediculous amount of data, just now I caught it sending this much:


AGBBAs8.png


Like, why? what's it sending? what's it receiving? how can I access this information?
 
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You can see exactly what it is sending and receiving by loading a program like wireshark. it will capture every byte of traffic passing over the networks cards.

A lot of the strange traffic is advertising. The worst offenders play video ads which eat a lot of bandwidth. They will do this even when the browser is minimized.

Ad blockers help and I run script blockers also but doing this many times will break web sites.

Note if you really think someone is on your machine the best defense is what it called a honey pot. You put a bunch of stuff on the machine that has fake names on files etc and looks very interesting but is garbage files. It causes them to waste their time on that rather than your real data. This is always the best way to hide data on any machine, there is so much trash that looks important but is not that nobody can find anything.
 
Solution
You can see exactly what it is sending and receiving by loading a program like wireshark. it will capture every byte of traffic passing over the networks cards.

Wireshark, yes.

A lot of the strange traffic is advertising. The worst offenders play video ads which eat a lot of bandwidth. They will do this even when the browser is minimized.
Ad blockers help and I run script blockers also but doing this many times will break web sites.

Exactly. Video ads may silently slurp many megabytes of traffic if allowed. Because of that all my browsers have UBlock Origin plugin installed with enforced region checklists (I know where most ad servers for sites I'm using are located).