Could someone steal my wi fi / bandwidth?

I hope I'm posting in the right category. I need help but let me start by saying that my pc knowledge is relatively limited so I hope I get the terminology right
I used iburst for years and never used more than a gig a month.
2 months ago I changed to telkom adsl, I have the mega 105WR modem and in the last month I used about 10 gigs and keep running out.
Last night it used 380 megs while I was sleeping?

In the last 2 weeks I have changed the passwords
I have turned auto update and auto sync off on my cell phone (connects on wi fi)
I have installed network monitors and only see my own ip connecting but the lights on my rooter is going crazy - ie something / someone is using bandwidth?
I have downloaded myWifi zone - I installed the driver as per the instructions on the page and I cannot get it to work (could it because because I'm on windows 7?)

What else can I try?
Thanks!
Leane

 

Most routers have the capability to show the devices that are connected to them but you might need to read your documentation to work it out.

You could probably use MAC Address filtering but I expect that will open up all manor of problems and shouldnt be needed. I dont see that it is possible for that to happen unless you have some sort of crossed phone line and someone else is useing your line and you are using someone elses but that would be obvious because you would be getting their phone calls too.

 

what kind of security do you have running on the router wifi?


I.E. is the wireless encrypted? If so by what? WEP? WPA? WPA2?

 

Are you referring to the router password? If so, that is a step in protecting your network. The changed password keeps people from changing any configuration settings on the router itself.

Looking up information on myWIFIzone ( http://www.mywifizone.com/ ), I would uninstall this program.

As collinsl has asked, did you set up any encryption on your wireless connection? Since you refer to using Win7, I would assume your comp is fairly new and would be capable of using the WPA2 level of security. By having this encryption on your wireless connection, no one will be able to use your bandwidth without having the network key to connect.
In your router configuration pages there is a tab that has the header Security where you can set this up. The longer and more random the password, or network key, the harder it will be to break into for a hacker.

As to the usage going up, if your comp is set up in the same way as before, I would say someone is probably free loading on your connection if you have no encryption set up. They may or may not be maliciously doing this, but if you pay for bandwidth usage, someone could be trying to get something for free while your wallet suffers.

 

It is perfectly possible that someone is stealing you bandwidth and if you have not setup security it is even easier.
My network has been hacked twice and i am PC savvy so it can happen to anyone.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=240219

There are some suggestions in this thread that may help but the most effective way if you are able to do it is to hard wire the pc to your router and disable the wifi.

If you are on limited bandwidth it is imperative to stop it or you will keep going over your limit.

 

Thanks for the response.

I had AVG but just replaced it with Microsoft security essentials, the anti virus found 10 trojans.
Did a malwarebytes scan and found 9.
Turned off the SSID and checked the DHCP and no one else is connecting but to be safe I changed the LAN settings and registered my laptop etc as LAN clients.

This seems to have solved the problem

Thanks again
LG