Just cant trust people anymore

[ustmd]

It is most likely a "scam". The an outside company will contact you and say that they will sue you (and "out" you as a **** loving thief) or you can settle right now for $2-3K.

Seach for Prenda law and read the stories about it. They had made a business of it and have been beaten down by the courts.

 

[dmccarty]

You should ALWAYS encrypt your WiFi data stream AND CHANGE the default password on the router.

If your WiFi data is not encrypted someone can read that data which could include email with banking information, SSNs, passwords, etc. J

In the OP's case, I doubt any file downloads were because of an unencrypted WiFi connection. It is possible if you have houses nearby or visiters but it is most likely the OP picked up a virus that is allowing access to his system.

We are remote and we cannot see any other WiFi from our house. We loose the signal to our WiFi within a few hundred feet of the house. Between us and other houses is thick woods which blocks the WiFi signal. I suppose it is possible for someone with very sophisticated equipment to pick up our WiFi but it will be a state actor and not Henry Hacker.

I know a person who is constantly getting her email hacked. It could be because of bad passwords she uses or more likely she is clicking on email that has a virus which is then installed on her system. It happens to her about every year or so. How do I know? Because I will get strange email from her with subject lines she would never send and the email always has an attachment. Gee what would be in the attachment?

Encrypt the WiFi, change the admin password, and use a GOOD password word. Don't use password for password. Use a password with lots of characters and NUMBERs. At least eight characters but more, much more is better. Actually, don't think of using a password but a PASS PHRASE, something like, IGo2TBN4Fun.

Later,
Dan

 

[Pine Strip]

Unplug your router when you go away on vacation.

 

[sshaw]

The fact you received this notice via an email makes it very suspicious and very likely a scam to extort money from you. You should never respond to unsolicited email. If there was truly a suspicion of illegal copyright infringement going on at your residence, I would expect you'd receive a notice in the mail.

I don't know what you mean by i/p, but I will assume you mean Internet Service Provider (ISP), like CenturyLink, Verizon, etc. The phone number in the email could easily be a fake, and not associated with your ISP.

You could go to the website for your ISP, look up their contact information, and verify that the phone number in the email is legitimate. You might have to call your ISP to verify it's legitimate. If the phone number in the email was fake, it'a certainly a scam. Either way, I would report this to the FBI as a potential scam, because even though the person you called was low pressure, you were left with the threat of current, and increasing fines.

The FBI has a web page (link below) with information on current e-scams, and how to report them. If you read the page, you will see that many of the scams described involve telling someone that their IP address has been involved with accessing illegal content. This is exactly your situation.
http://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/e-scams

You report a potential e-scam via this webpage:
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) | File a Complaint

 

[sshaw]

The advice about using encryption on WiFi, changing your router password, using strong passwords, etc. is very good advice and people need to do it.

However, none of that would have helped if this an extortion scam, because nobody needed to access buckshot721's WiFi to send the scam email.

 

[JD5210]

You need to password your router and WIFI and NOT broadcast your SSID/network name. Here is an actual example. My neighbors house is a 1000 feet away and his router is on the window ledge. I can connect and use his router. I told him about and he said that is no big deal. I took my PC over to his house and while his PC was on, I could transfer files to and from his PC. I did this using homegroup. His router and WIFI now has passwords and is no longer on the window ledge and his homegroup no longer uses the standard name.

 

[teejk]

You need to password your router and WIFI and NOT broadcast your SSID/network name. Here is an actual example. My neighbors house is a 1000 feet away and his router is on the window ledge. I can connect and use his router. I told him about and he said that is no big deal. I took my PC over to his house and while his PC was on, I could transfer files to and from his PC. I did this using homegroup. His router and WIFI now has passwords and is no longer on the window ledge and his homegroup no longer uses the standard name.

And for those of us on "measured service", it is really important to lock down your router. Our installer "tested" our WIFI by walking to the property line with his laptop and concluded that there was no need to secure it. Then we started experiencing regular "exceeded fair use policy " messages. I enabled security using a simple password. I'm not acusing the neighbors of anything but within a day or 2 they knocked on our door "just to say hi" and asked about whether we had internet service, explaining that their sister was addicted to Facebook. We were fine for a few weeks but then the messages started to appear again. I understand that there are programs available to crack simple passwords and apparently some computers are better than others overcoming the distance factor. At that point I let my router software generate a new password that could be cracked if somebody had a few years (it is absolute gibberish, upper/lower case letters with a mix of numbers thrown in for good measure). I have the admin rights to the router at my desk and can always retrieve the password from the software. And another thing is "smart phones". Even though the kids pay for a Verizon data plan, unless they do something on their phones, they seem to look for the path of least resistance and will drain the house usage before Verizon's.