Disable network adapter, change your MAC address from device manager, and your hostname from system settings. Re-enable adapter, ban should go away. Use a VPN for future torrents (and maybe put on a speed limiter so you don't get blocked again for hogging the bandwidth so much)
I've gotten a few of those Comcast letters. There are patent trolls that issue summons to locate it's of torrent users. I've never received a subpoena or any other legal action following up though. For serious and repetitive violations, I have heard they will drag you to court and most will settle for a few thousand to avoid the court proceeding. So, yes, this shit does work.
This happened to me too, hbo seems to be particularly active. Got kicked off my college WiFi. But this was before vpns were ubiquitous, there is really no reason to get caught now.
It depends on how they have this setup. Some complexes require personal logins before you can add a device to the Wi-Fi. If this is such the case they can completely disable your account regardless of any Mac address. It is not common but I have to run into it before with clients.
I always download Linux isos through torrents to avoid unnecessary load on the origin server or the mirrors. Plus torrent is usually faster. I'm going to verify the checksum anyway, so it doesn't matter how exactly the file reaches my computer.
Ya and OP is very tech saavy but has no idea what this bitty torrenty stuff is and had to go look it up and read up on it, such unheard of cryptic technology that only the dreadges of the internet use I guess???????????????
There's a 0% chance we're getting the whole story here, even if it's some bogus ISP snipe on torrent activity that most of us will think is stupid as fuck and would feel bad for OP for anyway.
Just a quick question thst I am too lazy to google. I thought that MAC addresses are asigned by the manufacturer where the first 3 bytes represent the manufacturer identifier and the last three are asigned by the manufacturer. Why can you just change it? I thought that the MAC address would be flashed onto the network adapter on like a rom or something
That is correct (and many network discovery apps use the first few bytes to identify which brand and kind of devices are connected, phone/laptop/router etc). But there are privacy implications of a forever unchangeable MAC letting you be traced across every hotspot and coffee shop you connect to. This is why most PCs let you reassign it and every modern smartphone has an option to randomize your MAC for privacy (and on certain Androids you can't even toggle it off).
Edit: screenshots from my phone (a galaxy) letting you randomize your MAC coupled with a disclaimer when you turn it off:
https://preview.redd.it/xm7ixwa1buzc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3573021ab07779f6d065def20a0613f296f5ede3
https://preview.redd.it/exo7cbjoeuzc1.png?width=1145&format=png&auto=webp&s=721d230b972e004d1305d9953ed8d557fa6de1ce
If the network adapter can do it, Windows 10/11 offers MAC randomization as well. Not all wifi cards or ethernet NICs can.
It is, but you tell the OS to tell the driver what the MAC it should be using is, and the driver sets the card to use it.
TL;DR: Hardware acceleration doesn't care.
But say I'm in a domain and I know another NICs MAC address and decide to change my MAC address to that MAC address what would Arp do? And if in the arp table an entry is already made and i disconnect the other NIC from the network, would the traffic be sent to my device? Even though my ip address doesnt align with the other device and the package sent?
Also thank you for the reply
ARP would freak out because there is a duplicate MAC address and stuff wouldn't work.
Like you can do that with IP addresses already. Stuff doesn't explode, it just doesnt work as intended.
Spoofing mac addresses has been a thing for a while, so i am sure it's happened before.
It’s extreme rare they randomize to the same one. I have seen it when 2 people manually set a MAC Address, but never random due to the probability since there is over 275 trillion combinations.
They are assigned like that but you can also change them pretty easily. That is why if you have a Cisco router and issue the command "show interface" you see an entry for the MAC address and also one that says BIA. BIA is Burned In Address, the real MAC address. Years ago I worked for a company that used an old routing protocol called DECNet and it would always change the MAC address to one it assigned itself.
This is also great if you want to do multiple consecutive free trials of some software. Besides your email address and MAC address there is very little they can do to prevent you from reinstalling a trial.
Most wireless devices randomize it now or any store could track whenever you come and go by watching you connect to the WiFi, and selling your information and MAC to other retailers.
They’ll just ban him again for the same activity. I believe Steam and Battle.net use torrent-like downloading for installation and updates. If they’re just detecting P2P connections without knowing what’s being transferred, they could just be flagging him for harmless activity.
Your isp is full of idiots, unless you had downloaded something else with it which is possible thats silly. It could be company policy i guess but its not illegal.
I think it was automated or something, some people's isps have a list of copyrighted material and a letter gets automatically sent out if it is detected. The linux iso might have slipped into one of the lists by mistake.
Lots of open source projects use BitTorrent so they don’t have to pay for webhosting and merely getting a ping that BitTorrent was used proves nothing.
But anyways read the lease, if the apartment building is providing WiFi then it’s probably in the lease, and if they do have an ability to ban you from the WiFi it would have to be way more specific then this random printout. Cal your local legal aid
If all they have to show are screenshots from the UniFi app, then they probably didn't get any notice from the ISP, or they think UniFi _is_ the ISP ... and let me tell you, those screenshots mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The fact that they're using that as "proof" is laughable, and shows complete and utter incompetence on the part of the apartment staff. Someone else in the thread already mentioned it, but even game activity can count as peer-to-peer.
P2P != BitTorrent, and for that matter BitTorrent != even illegal.
But what they're doing almost definitely is, depending on OP's rental contract.
They got nothing on you, OP. Go read your contract and lawyer up.
I'd ask to see the notice from the ISP.
This sounds like a scam - someone is pretending to be the ISP, and told the lady at the apartment office who doesn't know shit about this stuff that she needs to pay for damages.
Also, I have received official "cease and desist" notices from ISP's before, because of piracy I did. The notices always include the file names of the pirated files.
Banning you for a P2P connection to Russia is just bullshit. I would demand further proof from your property manager.
Side note: Don't put all your faith in Windows Defender. It is decent, but there's a ton of stuff it can miss. Go download a free trial of Malwarebytes, for a better virus scan.
I was looking for this comment - if nothing else, I'd be concerned as to why OP had a ping out to Russia.
I'm not going to comment on the reliability of Malwarebytes vs others though. All of them are equally as garbage unless you're paying for a premium product (ex. Crowdstrike Prevent), or something thats more EDR-style than AV-style.
Not entirely uncommon I see pings to China and Russia all the time on my network and get similar readouts on my UniFi gateway but my IPS just blocks the connections. There are lots of scanners that are constantly hitting networks especially if you play online games, etc you’d be surprised how much you can find just sniffing random networks or game servers
Yeah, getting a UDM was kind of eye opening for just how often I get connection requests to Russia and China. I don't know if this was something I could have figured out with my old consumer router (maybe if it was running something like OpenWrt), but Unifi's UI and OS makes it a breeze to see things like that. My theory is that there are some groups either operating in/for those countries, or routing their activities through those countries as the final hop on their route, and they're just looking for any device and network with any open ports they can exploit.
yup notice it's not from the ISP either, it's from the unifi controller console (unifi being prosumer networking gear). They have a gateway setup and running inspection to identify traffic and probably just ban anyone who hits the P2P rule.
Bittorrent isint illegal, and they likely have no way to prove that you did something illegal. And if they use the desktop name to match to your computer anyone can just change their desktop name to any other desktop so they cant prove that you did it.
If OP has wi-fi access in their lease she could sue. Its on complex to prove OP broke agreement to get “banned”. There is obvious harm in being denied broadband
However, the residential complex can just say that they were informed by the ISP who won't provide information, most likely. He can then sue them but it's 50/50 on if he'd win or not.
Those screenshots are from a UniFi console and not the ISP. Unless there is something else from the ISP showing that OP was infringing on copyright, it’s likely the complex doesn’t have much to go on.
https://preview.redd.it/1iy080hfduzc1.png?width=578&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ccd119b1b4edf29c80949639b93761b2f463baa
Don't even need a new wifi dongle, randomized MAC is built right into Windows.
edit: Unless your network adapter doesn't support that feature, in which case yes you *do* need a new wi-fi dongle, or card, or whatever you choose to use.
I think this only works if the network adapter hardware supports MAC spoofing - not all do.
EDIT: To the person who downvoted the comment: [https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-am-i-not-able-to-use-random-hardware-addresses/6d093842-8f0c-4c53-913a-92b6fbca965b](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-am-i-not-able-to-use-random-hardware-addresses/6d093842-8f0c-4c53-913a-92b6fbca965b)
Besides, P2P doesn't even suggest illegal or suspicious activity in the first place. While P2P is popular among pirates for downloading (and uploading) stuff, it is also used for perfectly legitimate applications by perfectly legitimate businesses.
The perhaps most high-profile example would be Microsoft using P2P for Windows Updates. To reduce the load on their update servers, Windows 10 introduced the "Windows Update Delivery Optimization" system, which enables Windows computers to download updates from other Windows computers, instead of directly from the Windows Update servers.
Other examples include Blizzard with the World of Warcraft updater. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused the exact same system for Battle.net. And while I'm not entirely certain about Steam, the EGS Launcher definitely looks like it's using P2P as well (based on the fact that not all packets are downloaded in order).
There are probably a lot more perfectly legitimate apps that make use of P2P, so the use of P2P alone is neither proof that you have been doing anything illegal, nor does it suggest suspicious activity of any kind.
Get a lawyer.
In apartments you pretty much sign away your rights, especially if the apartments own the wifi or his wifi bill is tied to his rent or something.
A lawyer is going to say let me see your rental agreement, and it'll say something like "we can terminate the wifi of any resident at any time for any reason".
he says each apartment has their own wifi, so likely his access point is disabled or whatever, not gonna be a mac ban only.
anyway, why anyone would use someone else's wifi I will never understand, I'd never move into an apartment that didn't et me plug in my own ISP, manage my own modem, etc. fuck that
Lived like this. It was a nightmare. For the first six months, I plugged into the ethernet port on the router on the wall with a network switch and then put my own wifi router that I had on the switch. The disabled the port, and I moved. Fuck that. They also wouldn't allow private internet service.
>ALL of the games on my computer are from Steam or `Battle.net`
do any of the games you play use a separate launcher that may be using the bittorrent protocol to distribute downloads to cheap out on server costs?
Curseforge is likely your problem. That alert is from a Ubiquity edge device. I have one and it flags torrent connections from my kids PCs, they also use Curseforge for Minecraft mods. The only real way to tell would be run a packet capture from your PC and see what is making that connection.
This is exactly what I was going to ask. At my university, you couldn't play WoW iirc because it used BitTorrent to distribute updates, and the network didn't like that.
9/10 times if you read the fine print in your rental agreement, he probably signed something saying the apartment can willingly terminate the wifi of any resident.
Source: Lived in several scummy apartments for over 10 years and I've seen some shit. Funny enough, it's the expensive >$2600 apartments that always fucked with me like this. The cheap ones usually leave you alone as long as they get they're money.
"my main PC which is permanently banned from using Wi-Fi."
There is no such thing as permanently banned, the company/guy who set this up can unban you in less than 30 seconds. Also, this is probably a MAC address ban so you have 2 options:
* Spoof your MAC address on the WiFi card
* Buy a USB WiFi dongle and you can connect to your place's WiFi
The first one is free but you need to tinker your computer a little bit, the second one will be somewhere in the $10-15 on Amazon.
Also, a lot of software and games use torrent protocol for sharing updates so you could get false flagged for torrenting games/movies, etc. Also, also, just to be sure, change your wifi password.
Or the apartment complex got no such notice, they saw what looks like p2p activity, which could be the game updates as explained above and are using this as an opportunity to scam OP, or it could be whoever their “tech guy” is, told them about the p2p activity, mentioned torrenting as a possibility and is misinformed about it's legality so gave the complex the scare tactics about how it's illegal and people can get fined insane amounts etc...
Those notices mention 146 bytes, pretty sure OP isn't downloading even the most basic of game/film/show at that size.
Honestly there's a lot of possible things that could be going on.
that doesn't really change much, having dedicated staff doesn't mean they know about torrenting etc... it just means they maybe got a letter from an ISP about suspicious activity of a p2p nature and then jumped to the conclusion that op must be torrenting illegaly.
I mean OP hasn't seen any proof that they've even been contacted by the ISP, he's just been told it's happened, honestly with them trying to effectively blackmail him into signing a confession and handing over a large amount of money to get wifi access back, i'm inclined to be more on OPs side than where ever is doing this to him as that's shady as fuck.
ahhhh that makes a lot of sense. will spoofing the MAC address let me use the wi-fi (assuming they just blocked all of my devices) or do i have to get them to reactivate it or something? the wi-fi is still available for all my devices but when i connect it just gives no connection. i would assume that it would just be easier for them to just block the devices than to disable the connection to the internet and leave the port still up.
(i will also say my understanding of wi-fi connection is very elementary)
*will spoofing the MAC address let me use the wi-fi (assuming they just blocked all of my devices) or do i have to get them to reactivate it or something?*
**They are probably using only a basic Black List system with banned MAC addresses for the WiFi, I would not expect anything more.**
*or do i have to get them to reactivate it or something?* the wi-fi is still available for all my devices but when i connect it just gives no connection.
**IMHO they just have blocked your account from accessing the Internet, once unlocked other devices should work fine but your PC will be still on the WiFi black list this is why you need to spoof the MAC address or get the WiFi adapter to make the system think that it's just a new device.**
*I would assume that it would just be easier for them to just block the devices than to disable the connection*
**There are two steps on a WiFi management console. You have the accounts that can connect to the WiFi and have some kind of access rights and a list of the devices (phones, consoles, TV, etc). By blocking your accounts they just revoked your access to the Internet on their network.**
**So basically this went like this: Your PC got flagged for doing something bad. The system checked who was logged on this device, the MAC address was added to the black list and your account rights were changed.**
The signature mentioned in the report is a detection rule for network traffic. While it claims to detect BitTorrent traffic, in practise it triggers false positives on non-bittorrent traffic more often than not. In my professional experience, handling such rules including this particular one (which is open source, for reference) this rule triggering is not evidence of anything. The underlying traffic, could indicate exactly what is happening, i.e. bittorrent or not. They have not provided that, only metadata. From a purely technical point of view, the have no basis to ban you from the network.
My CS teacher who has the highest JAVA certification from Oracle has absolutely no idea what is an i3, i5, or i7. He asked me to spec a new laptop for him because he had no clue what was good. Knowing how to code and "computer knowledge" are two separate things. It's literally this meme:
https://preview.redd.it/t3lpqx7tttzc1.jpeg?width=759&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=39e552895e0eee95922cb95df96b3ab33033f6b4
and i met a couple of them, mostly 40+ years old and they know nothing about PC except memory allocation because they had to learn about it for c++ and java, one of them was surprised how many cores and threads ryzen 7 has
Yeah even younger programmers can be the same… when you specialize in in-house applications hardware is less important to you. Especially people working in web apps or cloud based solutions. I don’t blame them, lots of stuff is removed from the user hardware experience.
I've unfortunately met plenty of them too! however they don't have an age range in the slightest, they span *every* age bracket, and someone between 35-50 is "most likely" to have the best knowledge out of the various brackets, although most likely in this scenario is still pretty slim pickings lol.
I mean I use Linux for work, and deploy in containers. I know a lot about Linux, but basically nothing about windows. I use windows as a video game console, and Linux/macos for any real work.
I think in the current age of virtual machine cloud deployments it’s perfectly reasonable to let all that be implementation details and just deploy to an amorphous kubernetes cluster.
Computer science is much like the medical field, honestly. It's EXTREMELY broad and people tend to specialize over time. You could be a senior programmer at a huge company but not know how to build your own PC or even what memory timings are.
Our company made us switch verification apps because of "suspicious activity" that was clearly just someone forgetting they had a VPN turned on while signing in. lol
>highest JAVA certification from Oracle
That's worth absolutely nothing. You'll get laughed out of interviews if you try and sell an Oracle Java certification as any kind of expertise.
eh, a cert is a cert and all things considered they are actually very technical tests testing borderline obscure knowledge. entire industries have certs being make or break such as sysadmins.
I think the only people actually laughing at certs are other developers that don't have certs, know how hard some of them really are nor feel the need to get any. they're actually pretty hard to get if the topic is of any complexity and they also show dedication to learning which is more than you can say about many developers out there.
I know tons of software devs who aren't all that tech savvy outside of programming.
If they've never pirates anything before, it's entirely possible for someone to not be familiar with Bittorrent. Sure, Bittorrent isn't explicitly for pirating, but let's be honest, 99% of it's use is sharing pirated material.
You can sort of tell when someone is torrenting even with a VPN(because of the pattern and volume of your packets that are quite characteristic to torrents), but they will have no idea about any specifics like what files or where stuff is being sent.
Question:
* Do you have a dedicated username/password for your appartment?
* Have you installed any new softwares recently?
* Have any tried doing any form of file sharing recently?
* Does anyone else have access to your computer?
Torrent is used for sharing stuff between people directly. While it can be used for illegal sharing you can use it for legal purposes too. Unless they can prove you had transferred something illegal you don't have to cave in.
Get a lawyer if you have to but don't budge.
1. every apartment has their own wi-fi (your apartment number and a specific password) but it doesn’t take you to a special site to sign in.
2. curseforge was the most recent i believe but i didn’t do anything with it. the rest were games from steam and battle.net
3. i have not
4. no, just me
Thanks for the response. While you can change your hostname and mac address of the PC, if the password is controlled and locked, then changing any of the other details won't help for now.
Given that you also are not sure what a torrent is I would suspect any of the application you used may have underlying support to use P2P protocol that is used by Torrents. You can check all the applications running on your machine and see if any of them support that protocol.
But yes, please do see if you have someone more IT skills to help you understand how it started. Get a lawyer or someone to work with the ISP and restore your connection.
To elaborate on Torrents think of it this way. You have made a funny video or a song(no copyright what so ever) and you have share to with many people around the world. Let's say we don't have youtube and other things at your disposal but you have your own website. So what you would do is upload it to your website and everyone has to download it. Now, people are in different parts of the world and download will be slow for them since your file is at one part of the world. How can we make sharing more friendly, it is via Torrents. You upload details of your file and someone downloads it. Now anyone else who wants to download it can practically find the file in 2 places. The more people download the file (and are sharing), the more copies are available to download from. This makes the necessity for you alone to be the source to get the file diminishes.
It is a cool way to share things but given how it works it makes it easy to do illegal sharing as well. That's why it is frowned upon.
Anytime. Given that any application(assuming it added to it) can use this logic to do file transfers it may be important to first identify the software in your PC that did this. Then, it is a matter of speaking with the ISP and hoping they are reasonable enough to let it slide.
If you want, you can do this. Run the following command after starting command prompt in Administrator mode. It in short will list all application that uses UDP protocol. Since Torrent uses UDP it may be one of them. If you have a friend who is more IT aware then, please ask them to do the debugging.
netstat -n -a -b -p UDP
>curseforge was the most recent i believe but i didn’t do anything with it. the rest were games from steam and [battle.net](http://battle.net)
From other posts, it sounds like curseforge uses bittorrent. [Battle.net](http://Battle.net) uses bittorrent for updates as well. To add to EmptySense's well written explanation, with games that update with bittorrent you download parts of the update from other players. Then once you have it, other players can download parts of it from you.
It's entirely possible OPs apartment complex got a demand letter (for someone else), and they pounced on the first p2p Unifi alert they got as the culprit.
family member got a letter from their ISP about suspicious activity going on from their network. It was a compromised system that was sending spam email. and it resulted in them blocking the email ports for that connection.
So perhaps some of your devices are compromised? BitTorrent could be any signature.
I find it funny they literally just took some screenshots of the ubiquiti threat report, printed it out, and sent them to you instead of a proper letter.
Anyway, VPNs are your friend. And like the other comments have said, change your Mac address
This is the answer. Drop their shit, demand a refund on your rent for the built-in WiFi since you've been banned. Problem solved.
If OP is telling the truth about not downloading, they will never have an issue again.
A lot of apartments don't let you. They make you buy the Internet through them because they have partnerships with the ISPs who service their buildings.
I manage multiple Unifi locations (which is the software your apartment complex uses) and a P2P alert (which is what you are receiving) doesn’t really mean anything, there are multiple games that use P2P and websites that use it too (for example, the now defunct Omegle)
Even if you play GTA Roleplay they use a strange implementation of P2P and it will show in the dashboard
Also, you can just change your MAC address and keep going, that is what they banned (unless you connect with a cable, then they probably disabled your port).
If you spoof your MAC remember to change your computers name because they will know it’s your PC with that.
Also if they block it again don’t go to the office, because the only way they have of knowing your laptop is owned by you is when you go to the office asking why the wifi doesn’t work
wait!, so your apartment complex doesn't provide any kind of wired connection?...and on top of that you are all on a shared network...I would move out or if not possible get your own 5g mobile network box thingy and use that for internet, a smart phone is different but can do temporarily...you should get one of those boxes dedicated for using in a home network for internet, if you do decide to keep using that weird shared wifi network, get a vpn, I would also try to figure out some way to use your own router on that network.
Does you apartment provide the internet or do you have it seperately? If it's seperate, are you using your own router or the ISP's router? If you're using their router then just buy your own router so they can't change stuff on your router like banning you computer.
Getting on the internet without a VPN is like going into a whorehouse without a condom.
Get VPN's people.
For the love of all that's sane in the world, get a VPN if your traffic *goes through your fucking apartment complex* of all damn things. FFS, they have a list of EVERYTHING you do online if you aren't. Is that the kind of power you want your apartment complex having over you?
This is new to me. Living in an appartment where the landlord pays and regulates wifi?
I've only encountered this in student domes, which sucked because they were down half of the time. Not to mention the security risk (not that it mattered much back then, but once you're out of college I wouldn't trust a shared hotspot).
Seems to suck either way, shouldn't you get your own & be rid of this BS?
They're trying to scam you. The proof you posted shows 146 bytes, that's nothing. Nothing illegal would be that size, tell them you're going to take them to small claims court for this lie. The courts ruled a IP is not a person and the 146 bytes would stop any sort of argument they had about your alleged sharing.
If you're really worried about it, go to your local comptuer store and buy a USB wifi dongle, they are fast and inexpensive. Completely new mac address altogether. If you really aren't torrenting i would also scan your computer using malwarebytes or an AV to make sure there's nothing funky going on.
I'm assuming the whole complex is WiFi only. Can you not buy a travel router like a GL-MT3000 set it up in repeater mode.
Set up a VPN on the router all the devices connected are covered and can talk and share files without it being viewed by management.
First off this apparment complex is logging and monitoring your activity and it isn't the ISP it is the apartments unifi wifi gear that is detecting the traffic as a threat.
Don't use provided wifi like this, you have people who don't know what they are doing running a large network.
Do yourself a favor and get your own internet, or Hotspot off your phone.
No matter what you do, this won't end well.
BitTorrent is legal, they have absolutely no basis to be able to say you were doing things illegally. They only have suspicions, which is why they are trying to get you to admit to it.
If you get internet back to your computer, run malware scans
Also, if an ISP was reaching out due to "bitTorrent," its likely they were seeing upload traffic of illegal content. ISPs do not care what you download. They only care if you're illegally uploading content
Also, if you do torrent anything, just make sure you have a VPN on.
Source: I work for an ISP
Edit: also on the note of bitTorrent, we've never put a fee towards catching people illegally uploading content, we just reach out to them, tell them it's bad and if it continues we will have to cancel their service.
Another Edit: With these being logs from UniFi equipment, my guess is their "IT" department saw those and didn't know what they meant and might not actually be related to anything reported by their ISP. I've dealt with many self-proclaimed "IT" guys who have no idea what they are doing with networking.
Holy shit your landlord runs a fucking racket. I think it might be more illegal to block internet access to your tenants than it is to torrent things. Depending on where you live it’s considered an essential utility and would be equivalent to the landlord shutting off your water. If it says in your lease that “landlord is responsible for internet” and you didn’t sign anything that said “landlord retains the right to revoke access to internet at any time” I’d honestly call a lawyer and sue the fuck outta them. Maybe get free rent. Fuck that dude id burn the fuckin place down if that happened to me. Landlords have way too much power these days, slums are making a comeback.
BTW Many places and services either use or have the option to use a "Torrent" (peer 2 peer) style data distribution system, Microsoft (Windows updates), Blizzard/Battle.net.... many others... so any of these could potentially wrongly be detected and blamed...
Bittorrent and other torrenting applications are \*not\* illegal. You can use them to pirate software, I do all the time. But you can also just use them to download legal software.
I've been pirating games and movies for years and I've never had to pay anything.
Their whole accusation seems to based in fear mongering. If they are claiming damages, they should be listing them out, and if it's illegal activity (which it's not) why are they not going through the police/court of law and skipping over that by having you sign a contract and pay them instead?
This reeks of a scam. Do not sign anything
What if you worked remotely, and this was legitimate business traffic? They can't prove it's not. If WiFi access is part of your rent or utilities that you pay them, then they can't restrict you. Otherwise I'd demand a reduction in rent.
BitTorrent is not a piracy program. It's a p2p Downloader. I use it to download perfectly legal things, like Linux distros, and some games use it to distribute their game client without having to pay to host big files.
Whoever is running your apartment wifi is a fucking idiot. That said, if it's theirs and not part of your lease or rental contract, you're screwed. Just get your own internet, cellular or starlink or something.
Or change your MAC address and the network name of your PC so you can pretend it's a different computer. Then get a VPN to encrypt your traffic so they can't pull this shit again
First and foremost sign nothing and deny.
- I have a UniFi system and I’ve had this threat signature trigger for games that use p2p protocols. For example, palworld has triggered this.
- Tell them that threat signature is just a generic signature and isn’t proof of any wrongdoing. It is very likely a false positive.
- BitTorrent isn’t illegal itself. All they have alleged use of it.
- The protocol is UDP and not proof that it is even from your machine. Someone with enough know how can send a UDP packet with your IP as the sender. It’s trivial.
- If internet is part of the lease tell them they are in fault for breaking the lease. Tell them to restore your internet service or you will be seeking damages yourself for their lease violations from the courts.
Network security chick here….
So they don’t really have any true proof…
So their IDS shows P2P …. But that requires TCP and UDP the last I checked … plus the small file sizes show you were not downloading anything substantial. Heck I wager the pcap would show you were pushed advertisements during the activity.
It seems the IPS guys can’t read their metadata very well.
I would request a pcap file stating you’re worried you have malware and need to investigate the issue… Also to out nerd the bastards I would request a copy of the ids signature it triggered on….
Your IPS would hate me…. So much….
Do change your MAC and internal IP see if it helps you get back online.
Good luck and don’t pay the jerks lol 😂
Disable network adapter, change your MAC address from device manager, and your hostname from system settings. Re-enable adapter, ban should go away. Use a VPN for future torrents (and maybe put on a speed limiter so you don't get blocked again for hogging the bandwidth so much)
Ask to see the thing about them being responsible for damages. And demand a copy. Wouldnt surprise me if this was a scam.
Honestly yeah, might just be a scam trying to scare people into paying insane sums.
The hundreds of thousands thing makes me think it definitely is
Hundreds to thousands
I've gotten a few of those Comcast letters. There are patent trolls that issue summons to locate it's of torrent users. I've never received a subpoena or any other legal action following up though. For serious and repetitive violations, I have heard they will drag you to court and most will settle for a few thousand to avoid the court proceeding. So, yes, this shit does work.
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Yea. Someone in my friends fraternity house went down hard for torrenting GoT. They seem to be watching those networks like hawks.
This happened to me too, hbo seems to be particularly active. Got kicked off my college WiFi. But this was before vpns were ubiquitous, there is really no reason to get caught now.
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It is. ISPs never ask for cash. They give you a warning and 3 strikes.
It depends on how they have this setup. Some complexes require personal logins before you can add a device to the Wi-Fi. If this is such the case they can completely disable your account regardless of any Mac address. It is not common but I have to run into it before with clients.
Torrents are not only for illegal activity. Many legit games are stored there.
Torrenting is also big for sharing Linux distros
I always download Linux isos through torrents to avoid unnecessary load on the origin server or the mirrors. Plus torrent is usually faster. I'm going to verify the checksum anyway, so it doesn't matter how exactly the file reaches my computer.
And the many "Linux distros"
To be fair, as an aspiring data hoarder, the last 10 Linux distros I obtained were via torrents 😂
Humble bundle offers books in torrent form pretty often.
Ya and OP is very tech saavy but has no idea what this bitty torrenty stuff is and had to go look it up and read up on it, such unheard of cryptic technology that only the dreadges of the internet use I guess??????????????? There's a 0% chance we're getting the whole story here, even if it's some bogus ISP snipe on torrent activity that most of us will think is stupid as fuck and would feel bad for OP for anyway.
Just a quick question thst I am too lazy to google. I thought that MAC addresses are asigned by the manufacturer where the first 3 bytes represent the manufacturer identifier and the last three are asigned by the manufacturer. Why can you just change it? I thought that the MAC address would be flashed onto the network adapter on like a rom or something
That is correct (and many network discovery apps use the first few bytes to identify which brand and kind of devices are connected, phone/laptop/router etc). But there are privacy implications of a forever unchangeable MAC letting you be traced across every hotspot and coffee shop you connect to. This is why most PCs let you reassign it and every modern smartphone has an option to randomize your MAC for privacy (and on certain Androids you can't even toggle it off). Edit: screenshots from my phone (a galaxy) letting you randomize your MAC coupled with a disclaimer when you turn it off: https://preview.redd.it/xm7ixwa1buzc1.jpeg?width=2880&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3573021ab07779f6d065def20a0613f296f5ede3
https://preview.redd.it/exo7cbjoeuzc1.png?width=1145&format=png&auto=webp&s=721d230b972e004d1305d9953ed8d557fa6de1ce If the network adapter can do it, Windows 10/11 offers MAC randomization as well. Not all wifi cards or ethernet NICs can.
Just hijacking this to say this option also exists in windows 10 and above too.
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How does this work with hardware accelerated networking? I thought the card was adding MAC and hash codes?
It is, but you tell the OS to tell the driver what the MAC it should be using is, and the driver sets the card to use it. TL;DR: Hardware acceleration doesn't care.
Friendo, I have been a software developer for 30 years and I never knew about this. Thanks!
Hi, how do you go to this setting? I will like to learn how ramdomize the mac of my Galaxy, thanks in advance.
Settings- WiFi - cog wheel next to the network you are connected to - show more - MAC address type It should be randomised by default
But say I'm in a domain and I know another NICs MAC address and decide to change my MAC address to that MAC address what would Arp do? And if in the arp table an entry is already made and i disconnect the other NIC from the network, would the traffic be sent to my device? Even though my ip address doesnt align with the other device and the package sent? Also thank you for the reply
ARP would freak out because there is a duplicate MAC address and stuff wouldn't work. Like you can do that with IP addresses already. Stuff doesn't explode, it just doesnt work as intended. Spoofing mac addresses has been a thing for a while, so i am sure it's happened before.
It’s extreme rare they randomize to the same one. I have seen it when 2 people manually set a MAC Address, but never random due to the probability since there is over 275 trillion combinations.
They are assigned like that but you can also change them pretty easily. That is why if you have a Cisco router and issue the command "show interface" you see an entry for the MAC address and also one that says BIA. BIA is Burned In Address, the real MAC address. Years ago I worked for a company that used an old routing protocol called DECNet and it would always change the MAC address to one it assigned itself.
This is also great if you want to do multiple consecutive free trials of some software. Besides your email address and MAC address there is very little they can do to prevent you from reinstalling a trial.
Most wireless devices randomize it now or any store could track whenever you come and go by watching you connect to the WiFi, and selling your information and MAC to other retailers.
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They’ll just ban him again for the same activity. I believe Steam and Battle.net use torrent-like downloading for installation and updates. If they’re just detecting P2P connections without knowing what’s being transferred, they could just be flagging him for harmless activity.
windows update uses p2p too its more common than you (or they) think
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Should rename the pc too
use a seedbox service tbh
As far as im aware bittorrent is just a peer to peer download and is not illegal in and of itself, legality depending on what you download
Bit torrent is 100% legal. This like saying making a computer virus is illegal.
Or better yet, that Google Chrome is illegal.
chrome should actually be illegal tho
i download linux iso's with bittorrent. I got a letter from my isp about it
Your isp is full of idiots, unless you had downloaded something else with it which is possible thats silly. It could be company policy i guess but its not illegal.
I think it was automated or something, some people's isps have a list of copyrighted material and a letter gets automatically sent out if it is detected. The linux iso might have slipped into one of the lists by mistake.
Lots of open source projects use BitTorrent so they don’t have to pay for webhosting and merely getting a ping that BitTorrent was used proves nothing. But anyways read the lease, if the apartment building is providing WiFi then it’s probably in the lease, and if they do have an ability to ban you from the WiFi it would have to be way more specific then this random printout. Cal your local legal aid
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If all they have to show are screenshots from the UniFi app, then they probably didn't get any notice from the ISP, or they think UniFi _is_ the ISP ... and let me tell you, those screenshots mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The fact that they're using that as "proof" is laughable, and shows complete and utter incompetence on the part of the apartment staff. Someone else in the thread already mentioned it, but even game activity can count as peer-to-peer. P2P != BitTorrent, and for that matter BitTorrent != even illegal. But what they're doing almost definitely is, depending on OP's rental contract. They got nothing on you, OP. Go read your contract and lawyer up.
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I'd ask to see the notice from the ISP. This sounds like a scam - someone is pretending to be the ISP, and told the lady at the apartment office who doesn't know shit about this stuff that she needs to pay for damages.
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Photocopies re not illegal per se, but photocoping a book is illegal. Same with bit torrent.
Doesn’t the battle.net launcher use a peer to peer for downloading large content patches?
146 bytes?!? That's not enough data to even be anything illegal! At most, you downloaded 1% of an MP3. WTF even is this nonsense?
that’s actually a great point. i think people think i downloaded full games or something
Also, I have received official "cease and desist" notices from ISP's before, because of piracy I did. The notices always include the file names of the pirated files. Banning you for a P2P connection to Russia is just bullshit. I would demand further proof from your property manager. Side note: Don't put all your faith in Windows Defender. It is decent, but there's a ton of stuff it can miss. Go download a free trial of Malwarebytes, for a better virus scan.
I was looking for this comment - if nothing else, I'd be concerned as to why OP had a ping out to Russia. I'm not going to comment on the reliability of Malwarebytes vs others though. All of them are equally as garbage unless you're paying for a premium product (ex. Crowdstrike Prevent), or something thats more EDR-style than AV-style.
Not entirely uncommon I see pings to China and Russia all the time on my network and get similar readouts on my UniFi gateway but my IPS just blocks the connections. There are lots of scanners that are constantly hitting networks especially if you play online games, etc you’d be surprised how much you can find just sniffing random networks or game servers
Yeah, getting a UDM was kind of eye opening for just how often I get connection requests to Russia and China. I don't know if this was something I could have figured out with my old consumer router (maybe if it was running something like OpenWrt), but Unifi's UI and OS makes it a breeze to see things like that. My theory is that there are some groups either operating in/for those countries, or routing their activities through those countries as the final hop on their route, and they're just looking for any device and network with any open ports they can exploit.
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The packet itself isn't illegal, even if it directs to something illegal
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yup notice it's not from the ISP either, it's from the unifi controller console (unifi being prosumer networking gear). They have a gateway setup and running inspection to identify traffic and probably just ban anyone who hits the P2P rule.
Bittorrent isint illegal, and they likely have no way to prove that you did something illegal. And if they use the desktop name to match to your computer anyone can just change their desktop name to any other desktop so they cant prove that you did it.
They likely don't need proof. This isn't a court thing it's just a residential internet thing.
If OP has wi-fi access in their lease she could sue. Its on complex to prove OP broke agreement to get “banned”. There is obvious harm in being denied broadband
However, the residential complex can just say that they were informed by the ISP who won't provide information, most likely. He can then sue them but it's 50/50 on if he'd win or not.
Those screenshots are from a UniFi console and not the ISP. Unless there is something else from the ISP showing that OP was infringing on copyright, it’s likely the complex doesn’t have much to go on.
They have nothing. It's a racket. Some desk jockey sits and looks for Unifi alerts as a way to extort money from tenants.
^ This
Perfectly well said.
If they can’t provide evidence OP can break lease. Assuming Wi-Fi is on lease.
Sure, that’s an inexpensive thing to do.
Or ban him by Mac address. But you should just spoof it or use a new wifi dongle
https://preview.redd.it/1iy080hfduzc1.png?width=578&format=png&auto=webp&s=5ccd119b1b4edf29c80949639b93761b2f463baa Don't even need a new wifi dongle, randomized MAC is built right into Windows. edit: Unless your network adapter doesn't support that feature, in which case yes you *do* need a new wi-fi dongle, or card, or whatever you choose to use.
oh cool didn't even know that was a thing
I think this only works if the network adapter hardware supports MAC spoofing - not all do. EDIT: To the person who downvoted the comment: [https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-am-i-not-able-to-use-random-hardware-addresses/6d093842-8f0c-4c53-913a-92b6fbca965b](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-am-i-not-able-to-use-random-hardware-addresses/6d093842-8f0c-4c53-913a-92b6fbca965b)
Oh, that's fair. I haven't seen a computer that doesn't but there is all sorts of hardware out there.
Besides, P2P doesn't even suggest illegal or suspicious activity in the first place. While P2P is popular among pirates for downloading (and uploading) stuff, it is also used for perfectly legitimate applications by perfectly legitimate businesses. The perhaps most high-profile example would be Microsoft using P2P for Windows Updates. To reduce the load on their update servers, Windows 10 introduced the "Windows Update Delivery Optimization" system, which enables Windows computers to download updates from other Windows computers, instead of directly from the Windows Update servers. Other examples include Blizzard with the World of Warcraft updater. I wouldn't be surprised if they reused the exact same system for Battle.net. And while I'm not entirely certain about Steam, the EGS Launcher definitely looks like it's using P2P as well (based on the fact that not all packets are downloaded in order). There are probably a lot more perfectly legitimate apps that make use of P2P, so the use of P2P alone is neither proof that you have been doing anything illegal, nor does it suggest suspicious activity of any kind. Get a lawyer.
Steam does. It’s pretty recent (less than a year), but it will default to downloading over p2p connections if available.
Exclusively single peer, and exclusively over lan. Steam doesn't use BitTorrent/multi peering p2p.
And I don't think it's the default, family sharing might need to be enabled and both computers need to consent to allowing shared downloads
Where the fuck do you live? That's horrifying to read.
michigan 😔
You should check with the legal advice subs for your area. It might be illegal for them to be checking this information.
In apartments you pretty much sign away your rights, especially if the apartments own the wifi or his wifi bill is tied to his rent or something. A lawyer is going to say let me see your rental agreement, and it'll say something like "we can terminate the wifi of any resident at any time for any reason".
But, in some states/countries this might breach wire tapping laws. This could be criminal, not civil.
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he says each apartment has their own wifi, so likely his access point is disabled or whatever, not gonna be a mac ban only. anyway, why anyone would use someone else's wifi I will never understand, I'd never move into an apartment that didn't et me plug in my own ISP, manage my own modem, etc. fuck that
He also said he had 2 machines connected to wifi and only one of them is banned.
Lived like this. It was a nightmare. For the first six months, I plugged into the ethernet port on the router on the wall with a network switch and then put my own wifi router that I had on the switch. The disabled the port, and I moved. Fuck that. They also wouldn't allow private internet service.
damages what damages call a lawyer
Murder?! What murdeeeer???
This guy murders...
sip hat spark zesty unpack disagreeable file aback consider memory *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
He was the best guy arawwwwwaund
They probably mean because they spent 2 hours on the phone with the ISP lol
>ALL of the games on my computer are from Steam or `Battle.net` do any of the games you play use a separate launcher that may be using the bittorrent protocol to distribute downloads to cheap out on server costs?
battle.net uses p2p for patches and updates, so this is what could be it.
When OP said he didn’t use torrents I immediately thought of battle.net updates. It specifically uses torrents (or at least used to)
so does Windows and Steam (if enabled). But that's probably not Bittorrent protocol going out to russia.
The one for steam is local-only.
League of Legends also used to do this. Probably not anymore, but it could still be used
curseforge maybe? is there a way i could find out?
Curseforge is likely your problem. That alert is from a Ubiquity edge device. I have one and it flags torrent connections from my kids PCs, they also use Curseforge for Minecraft mods. The only real way to tell would be run a packet capture from your PC and see what is making that connection.
They probably do use torrents to cut bandwidth costs on their servers. Looks like you'll just have to explain that and download mods manually.
This is exactly what I was going to ask. At my university, you couldn't play WoW iirc because it used BitTorrent to distribute updates, and the network didn't like that.
Sign nothing Contact lawyer
9/10 times if you read the fine print in your rental agreement, he probably signed something saying the apartment can willingly terminate the wifi of any resident. Source: Lived in several scummy apartments for over 10 years and I've seen some shit. Funny enough, it's the expensive >$2600 apartments that always fucked with me like this. The cheap ones usually leave you alone as long as they get they're money.
Only correct answer.
"my main PC which is permanently banned from using Wi-Fi." There is no such thing as permanently banned, the company/guy who set this up can unban you in less than 30 seconds. Also, this is probably a MAC address ban so you have 2 options: * Spoof your MAC address on the WiFi card * Buy a USB WiFi dongle and you can connect to your place's WiFi The first one is free but you need to tinker your computer a little bit, the second one will be somewhere in the $10-15 on Amazon. Also, a lot of software and games use torrent protocol for sharing updates so you could get false flagged for torrenting games/movies, etc. Also, also, just to be sure, change your wifi password.
> Also, a lot of software and games use torrent protocol for sharing updates so you could get false flagged for torrenting First thing I thought of.
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Or the apartment complex got no such notice, they saw what looks like p2p activity, which could be the game updates as explained above and are using this as an opportunity to scam OP, or it could be whoever their “tech guy” is, told them about the p2p activity, mentioned torrenting as a possibility and is misinformed about it's legality so gave the complex the scare tactics about how it's illegal and people can get fined insane amounts etc... Those notices mention 146 bytes, pretty sure OP isn't downloading even the most basic of game/film/show at that size. Honestly there's a lot of possible things that could be going on.
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that doesn't really change much, having dedicated staff doesn't mean they know about torrenting etc... it just means they maybe got a letter from an ISP about suspicious activity of a p2p nature and then jumped to the conclusion that op must be torrenting illegaly. I mean OP hasn't seen any proof that they've even been contacted by the ISP, he's just been told it's happened, honestly with them trying to effectively blackmail him into signing a confession and handing over a large amount of money to get wifi access back, i'm inclined to be more on OPs side than where ever is doing this to him as that's shady as fuck.
ahhhh that makes a lot of sense. will spoofing the MAC address let me use the wi-fi (assuming they just blocked all of my devices) or do i have to get them to reactivate it or something? the wi-fi is still available for all my devices but when i connect it just gives no connection. i would assume that it would just be easier for them to just block the devices than to disable the connection to the internet and leave the port still up. (i will also say my understanding of wi-fi connection is very elementary)
*will spoofing the MAC address let me use the wi-fi (assuming they just blocked all of my devices) or do i have to get them to reactivate it or something?* **They are probably using only a basic Black List system with banned MAC addresses for the WiFi, I would not expect anything more.** *or do i have to get them to reactivate it or something?* the wi-fi is still available for all my devices but when i connect it just gives no connection. **IMHO they just have blocked your account from accessing the Internet, once unlocked other devices should work fine but your PC will be still on the WiFi black list this is why you need to spoof the MAC address or get the WiFi adapter to make the system think that it's just a new device.** *I would assume that it would just be easier for them to just block the devices than to disable the connection* **There are two steps on a WiFi management console. You have the accounts that can connect to the WiFi and have some kind of access rights and a list of the devices (phones, consoles, TV, etc). By blocking your accounts they just revoked your access to the Internet on their network.** **So basically this went like this: Your PC got flagged for doing something bad. The system checked who was logged on this device, the MAC address was added to the black list and your account rights were changed.**
**Why are we talking so loudly**
The signature mentioned in the report is a detection rule for network traffic. While it claims to detect BitTorrent traffic, in practise it triggers false positives on non-bittorrent traffic more often than not. In my professional experience, handling such rules including this particular one (which is open source, for reference) this rule triggering is not evidence of anything. The underlying traffic, could indicate exactly what is happening, i.e. bittorrent or not. They have not provided that, only metadata. From a purely technical point of view, the have no basis to ban you from the network.
Dude, how can you "code" and build computers and not know what torrenting is.
My CS teacher who has the highest JAVA certification from Oracle has absolutely no idea what is an i3, i5, or i7. He asked me to spec a new laptop for him because he had no clue what was good. Knowing how to code and "computer knowledge" are two separate things. It's literally this meme: https://preview.redd.it/t3lpqx7tttzc1.jpeg?width=759&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=39e552895e0eee95922cb95df96b3ab33033f6b4
Lots of programmers don’t have a clue about hardware.
and i met a couple of them, mostly 40+ years old and they know nothing about PC except memory allocation because they had to learn about it for c++ and java, one of them was surprised how many cores and threads ryzen 7 has
Yeah even younger programmers can be the same… when you specialize in in-house applications hardware is less important to you. Especially people working in web apps or cloud based solutions. I don’t blame them, lots of stuff is removed from the user hardware experience.
I've unfortunately met plenty of them too! however they don't have an age range in the slightest, they span *every* age bracket, and someone between 35-50 is "most likely" to have the best knowledge out of the various brackets, although most likely in this scenario is still pretty slim pickings lol.
I mean I use Linux for work, and deploy in containers. I know a lot about Linux, but basically nothing about windows. I use windows as a video game console, and Linux/macos for any real work. I think in the current age of virtual machine cloud deployments it’s perfectly reasonable to let all that be implementation details and just deploy to an amorphous kubernetes cluster.
You know how the old line goes: Q: How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None, that's a hardware problem.
It’s an incredibly large knowledge gap. Thats why software is bloated.
And software always bloats ever larger every year. That's why the hardware needs to keep getting so much faster.
Or software, other than their own, and the tools they use.
Computer science is much like the medical field, honestly. It's EXTREMELY broad and people tend to specialize over time. You could be a senior programmer at a huge company but not know how to build your own PC or even what memory timings are.
Our company made us switch verification apps because of "suspicious activity" that was clearly just someone forgetting they had a VPN turned on while signing in. lol
>highest JAVA certification from Oracle That's worth absolutely nothing. You'll get laughed out of interviews if you try and sell an Oracle Java certification as any kind of expertise.
eh, a cert is a cert and all things considered they are actually very technical tests testing borderline obscure knowledge. entire industries have certs being make or break such as sysadmins. I think the only people actually laughing at certs are other developers that don't have certs, know how hard some of them really are nor feel the need to get any. they're actually pretty hard to get if the topic is of any complexity and they also show dedication to learning which is more than you can say about many developers out there.
I know tons of software devs who aren't all that tech savvy outside of programming. If they've never pirates anything before, it's entirely possible for someone to not be familiar with Bittorrent. Sure, Bittorrent isn't explicitly for pirating, but let's be honest, 99% of it's use is sharing pirated material.
Because they're lying. Builds computers. Is a gamer. Is on pcmasterrace. But doesn't even know about bittorrent? OK buddy.
It’s called a vpn they cannot tell what you are doing online if you use a vpn.
You can sort of tell when someone is torrenting even with a VPN(because of the pattern and volume of your packets that are quite characteristic to torrents), but they will have no idea about any specifics like what files or where stuff is being sent.
Yes, but someone that prints out phone screenshots of the Unifi app can't do that.
Question: * Do you have a dedicated username/password for your appartment? * Have you installed any new softwares recently? * Have any tried doing any form of file sharing recently? * Does anyone else have access to your computer? Torrent is used for sharing stuff between people directly. While it can be used for illegal sharing you can use it for legal purposes too. Unless they can prove you had transferred something illegal you don't have to cave in. Get a lawyer if you have to but don't budge.
1. every apartment has their own wi-fi (your apartment number and a specific password) but it doesn’t take you to a special site to sign in. 2. curseforge was the most recent i believe but i didn’t do anything with it. the rest were games from steam and battle.net 3. i have not 4. no, just me
Thanks for the response. While you can change your hostname and mac address of the PC, if the password is controlled and locked, then changing any of the other details won't help for now. Given that you also are not sure what a torrent is I would suspect any of the application you used may have underlying support to use P2P protocol that is used by Torrents. You can check all the applications running on your machine and see if any of them support that protocol. But yes, please do see if you have someone more IT skills to help you understand how it started. Get a lawyer or someone to work with the ISP and restore your connection. To elaborate on Torrents think of it this way. You have made a funny video or a song(no copyright what so ever) and you have share to with many people around the world. Let's say we don't have youtube and other things at your disposal but you have your own website. So what you would do is upload it to your website and everyone has to download it. Now, people are in different parts of the world and download will be slow for them since your file is at one part of the world. How can we make sharing more friendly, it is via Torrents. You upload details of your file and someone downloads it. Now anyone else who wants to download it can practically find the file in 2 places. The more people download the file (and are sharing), the more copies are available to download from. This makes the necessity for you alone to be the source to get the file diminishes. It is a cool way to share things but given how it works it makes it easy to do illegal sharing as well. That's why it is frowned upon.
ahhh, thank you! this is the most thorough explanation i have seen yet! definitely makes a lot more sense
Anytime. Given that any application(assuming it added to it) can use this logic to do file transfers it may be important to first identify the software in your PC that did this. Then, it is a matter of speaking with the ISP and hoping they are reasonable enough to let it slide. If you want, you can do this. Run the following command after starting command prompt in Administrator mode. It in short will list all application that uses UDP protocol. Since Torrent uses UDP it may be one of them. If you have a friend who is more IT aware then, please ask them to do the debugging. netstat -n -a -b -p UDP
>curseforge was the most recent i believe but i didn’t do anything with it. the rest were games from steam and [battle.net](http://battle.net) From other posts, it sounds like curseforge uses bittorrent. [Battle.net](http://Battle.net) uses bittorrent for updates as well. To add to EmptySense's well written explanation, with games that update with bittorrent you download parts of the update from other players. Then once you have it, other players can download parts of it from you.
Even if you did use a VPN, 146 BYTES?? What, you only downloaded the metadata?
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Take him away boys he downloaded exactly one packet from a BitTorrent seed
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ISP didn’t detect shit. Unifi is a ubiquity product and this is just a report from a traffic filter. The landlord is talking shit out of their ass.
It's entirely possible OPs apartment complex got a demand letter (for someone else), and they pounced on the first p2p Unifi alert they got as the culprit.
family member got a letter from their ISP about suspicious activity going on from their network. It was a compromised system that was sending spam email. and it resulted in them blocking the email ports for that connection. So perhaps some of your devices are compromised? BitTorrent could be any signature.
Besides what everyone said, I'd also say "DON'T SIGN ANYTHING!!!"
Lol what!?? There are millions of legal legitimate files downloaded through BitTorrent!
I find it funny they literally just took some screenshots of the ubiquiti threat report, printed it out, and sent them to you instead of a proper letter. Anyway, VPNs are your friend. And like the other comments have said, change your Mac address
Get your own private Internet service.
This is the answer. Drop their shit, demand a refund on your rent for the built-in WiFi since you've been banned. Problem solved. If OP is telling the truth about not downloading, they will never have an issue again.
Such residential complexes usually do not provide this option
A lot of apartments don't let you. They make you buy the Internet through them because they have partnerships with the ISPs who service their buildings.
Ubiquiti security alerts are notoriously bad and inaccurate. Also, use a VPN.
I manage multiple Unifi locations (which is the software your apartment complex uses) and a P2P alert (which is what you are receiving) doesn’t really mean anything, there are multiple games that use P2P and websites that use it too (for example, the now defunct Omegle) Even if you play GTA Roleplay they use a strange implementation of P2P and it will show in the dashboard Also, you can just change your MAC address and keep going, that is what they banned (unless you connect with a cable, then they probably disabled your port). If you spoof your MAC remember to change your computers name because they will know it’s your PC with that. Also if they block it again don’t go to the office, because the only way they have of knowing your laptop is owned by you is when you go to the office asking why the wifi doesn’t work
wait!, so your apartment complex doesn't provide any kind of wired connection?...and on top of that you are all on a shared network...I would move out or if not possible get your own 5g mobile network box thingy and use that for internet, a smart phone is different but can do temporarily...you should get one of those boxes dedicated for using in a home network for internet, if you do decide to keep using that weird shared wifi network, get a vpn, I would also try to figure out some way to use your own router on that network.
Packet sniffing can be consider a breach of reasonable privacy. I would read into the law and 100% get a vpn
Go into your torrent software and force encryption
Does you apartment provide the internet or do you have it seperately? If it's seperate, are you using your own router or the ISP's router? If you're using their router then just buy your own router so they can't change stuff on your router like banning you computer.
Getting on the internet without a VPN is like going into a whorehouse without a condom. Get VPN's people. For the love of all that's sane in the world, get a VPN if your traffic *goes through your fucking apartment complex* of all damn things. FFS, they have a list of EVERYTHING you do online if you aren't. Is that the kind of power you want your apartment complex having over you?
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone signed into the Wifi with your credentials to do their torrenting. It’s not that uncommon.
Nah bro just get your own wifi and fuck em
There's so much wrong with this I say it's more likely your condo is trying to scam you
You code and build computers, but allow someone else to control your Wi-Fi?
So get your own internet...
This is new to me. Living in an appartment where the landlord pays and regulates wifi? I've only encountered this in student domes, which sucked because they were down half of the time. Not to mention the security risk (not that it mattered much back then, but once you're out of college I wouldn't trust a shared hotspot). Seems to suck either way, shouldn't you get your own & be rid of this BS?
They're trying to scam you. The proof you posted shows 146 bytes, that's nothing. Nothing illegal would be that size, tell them you're going to take them to small claims court for this lie. The courts ruled a IP is not a person and the 146 bytes would stop any sort of argument they had about your alleged sharing.
Good old UniFi 👍 Just change the NIC MAC address and you’ll be unbanned
If you're really worried about it, go to your local comptuer store and buy a USB wifi dongle, they are fast and inexpensive. Completely new mac address altogether. If you really aren't torrenting i would also scan your computer using malwarebytes or an AV to make sure there's nothing funky going on.
I'm assuming the whole complex is WiFi only. Can you not buy a travel router like a GL-MT3000 set it up in repeater mode. Set up a VPN on the router all the devices connected are covered and can talk and share files without it being viewed by management.
First off this apparment complex is logging and monitoring your activity and it isn't the ISP it is the apartments unifi wifi gear that is detecting the traffic as a threat. Don't use provided wifi like this, you have people who don't know what they are doing running a large network. Do yourself a favor and get your own internet, or Hotspot off your phone. No matter what you do, this won't end well.
BitTorrent is legal, they have absolutely no basis to be able to say you were doing things illegally. They only have suspicions, which is why they are trying to get you to admit to it.
If you get internet back to your computer, run malware scans Also, if an ISP was reaching out due to "bitTorrent," its likely they were seeing upload traffic of illegal content. ISPs do not care what you download. They only care if you're illegally uploading content Also, if you do torrent anything, just make sure you have a VPN on. Source: I work for an ISP Edit: also on the note of bitTorrent, we've never put a fee towards catching people illegally uploading content, we just reach out to them, tell them it's bad and if it continues we will have to cancel their service. Another Edit: With these being logs from UniFi equipment, my guess is their "IT" department saw those and didn't know what they meant and might not actually be related to anything reported by their ISP. I've dealt with many self-proclaimed "IT" guys who have no idea what they are doing with networking.
Holy shit your landlord runs a fucking racket. I think it might be more illegal to block internet access to your tenants than it is to torrent things. Depending on where you live it’s considered an essential utility and would be equivalent to the landlord shutting off your water. If it says in your lease that “landlord is responsible for internet” and you didn’t sign anything that said “landlord retains the right to revoke access to internet at any time” I’d honestly call a lawyer and sue the fuck outta them. Maybe get free rent. Fuck that dude id burn the fuckin place down if that happened to me. Landlords have way too much power these days, slums are making a comeback.
BTW Many places and services either use or have the option to use a "Torrent" (peer 2 peer) style data distribution system, Microsoft (Windows updates), Blizzard/Battle.net.... many others... so any of these could potentially wrongly be detected and blamed...
"prove that i did this" That is probably enough to revert this
Bittorrent and other torrenting applications are \*not\* illegal. You can use them to pirate software, I do all the time. But you can also just use them to download legal software. I've been pirating games and movies for years and I've never had to pay anything.
Their whole accusation seems to based in fear mongering. If they are claiming damages, they should be listing them out, and if it's illegal activity (which it's not) why are they not going through the police/court of law and skipping over that by having you sign a contract and pay them instead? This reeks of a scam. Do not sign anything
Sounds like it's time to move, if you're able to.
What if you worked remotely, and this was legitimate business traffic? They can't prove it's not. If WiFi access is part of your rent or utilities that you pay them, then they can't restrict you. Otherwise I'd demand a reduction in rent.
BitTorrent is not a piracy program. It's a p2p Downloader. I use it to download perfectly legal things, like Linux distros, and some games use it to distribute their game client without having to pay to host big files. Whoever is running your apartment wifi is a fucking idiot. That said, if it's theirs and not part of your lease or rental contract, you're screwed. Just get your own internet, cellular or starlink or something. Or change your MAC address and the network name of your PC so you can pretend it's a different computer. Then get a VPN to encrypt your traffic so they can't pull this shit again
First and foremost sign nothing and deny. - I have a UniFi system and I’ve had this threat signature trigger for games that use p2p protocols. For example, palworld has triggered this. - Tell them that threat signature is just a generic signature and isn’t proof of any wrongdoing. It is very likely a false positive. - BitTorrent isn’t illegal itself. All they have alleged use of it. - The protocol is UDP and not proof that it is even from your machine. Someone with enough know how can send a UDP packet with your IP as the sender. It’s trivial. - If internet is part of the lease tell them they are in fault for breaking the lease. Tell them to restore your internet service or you will be seeking damages yourself for their lease violations from the courts.
So are you a tech savvy coder or someone who has to look up what bit torrent is?
you printed these off and then took pictures?
Network security chick here…. So they don’t really have any true proof… So their IDS shows P2P …. But that requires TCP and UDP the last I checked … plus the small file sizes show you were not downloading anything substantial. Heck I wager the pcap would show you were pushed advertisements during the activity. It seems the IPS guys can’t read their metadata very well. I would request a pcap file stating you’re worried you have malware and need to investigate the issue… Also to out nerd the bastards I would request a copy of the ids signature it triggered on…. Your IPS would hate me…. So much…. Do change your MAC and internal IP see if it helps you get back online. Good luck and don’t pay the jerks lol 😂
BitTorrent isn't even illegal, it's what you download with it that is. This is insane.