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1:04 pm
Tuesday,21 June, 2011
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Hello
We were recently moored at Hillmorton top lock during the snow and ice, a lovely place to be stuck! Unfortunately though, the boat behind us ‘stole’ 5GB of data from our monthly usage, causing us to run out, be fined, have to buy emergency data and finally go and buy a back-up dongle so that we could continue working.
This hasn’t happened before, we have firewall, password protection, mac addresses etc yet were still hacked into. We are internet users of experience, we require it to work and still we were hacked. After doing some research it’s true to say there are some deadly little downloads available that automatically and quickly search through passwords and mac addresses. It seems the people on the boat behind us had such a piece of software.
I would like to warn everyone that comes on here of the boat so that they can take precautions, we have turned our range down as low as possible so it only works inside one area of the boat and can’t be picked up at all outside.
Although I’d like to publish the boat’s name, it probably isn’t the ‘correct’ thing to do, I’m still furious and would like to warn others of the danger.
1:06 pm
Tuesday,21 June, 2011
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Oh, just as a clue, it has a sign on the back saying ‘generator run til late’. And they’re not joking!
3:34 pm
Friday,19 February, 2010
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A thief, and inconsiderate too. What a wonderful boater. I don’t know what makes people like that tick. As the old saying goes though, what goes around, comes around. They’ll get what they richly deserve one day.
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4:28 pm
Thursday,12 January, 2012
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We saw that boat (assuming it’s the same one) several times last year between Braunston and Hawkesbury. Given the state of the boat I wouldn’t have thought they had the know-how.
My internet is with T-Mobile with a ‘fair use’ 7.5GB allowance. If I run over they just send me an email telling me I can’t use it after 4pm.
Regards
Pete
Living retirement in the slow lane.
20 years hiring, 6 years of shared ownership and a Continuous Cruiser since 2007 but still learning!
9:13 am
Monday,31 October, 2011
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pearley said
We saw that boat (assuming it’s the same one) several times last year between Braunston and Hawkesbury. Given the state of the boat I wouldn’t have thought they had the know-how.
My internet is with T-Mobile with a ‘fair use’ 7.5GB allowance. If I run over they just send me an email telling me I can’t use it after 4pm.
Regards
Pete
If this is the boat covered in flowers and has a reference to a date, they are quite savey!
All he’s learn’t is churning up the mud and knocking down the banks and that is all he will ever know, I can tell you that!
11:46 am
Thursday,12 January, 2012
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Ray T said
If this is the boat covered in flowers and has a reference to a date, they are quite savey!
Sounds the same.
Living retirement in the slow lane.
20 years hiring, 6 years of shared ownership and a Continuous Cruiser since 2007 but still learning!
11:56 am
Tuesday,21 June, 2011
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Thank you for your responses everyone and thank you Pearley for the heads-up on your internet contract.
We need large amounts of data, 15GB for £18.00 per month, we use around 400MB per working day and if we have anything left before it renews we download a movie. It’s a good deal and cheap but if you run over the penalties are high, hence £20 for running over, £20 for emergency top up and nothing after that allowed until renewal. It did, however, give us the kick up the backside to go and get a backup dongle loaded with enough for emergencies that lasts 12 months. The week ate into about 5GB, I’m especially busy but it’s good to know there’s some left.
Yes, it’s the boat with flowers and a reference to date. We see it a lot.
There’s a nasty little piece of software that sits and waits for people logging in to their computers, it reads the mac address and uses it for however long you stay online. The only way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to turn the signal down as low as possible.
6:58 am
Tuesday,18 September, 2012
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What a sad life to lead, spending your time going round trying to steal a few quid of another boater’s data allowance
Retired; Somerset/Dorset border when not out and about on Lucy Lowther
Days without name and hours without number
http://thelovelylisanarrowboat.blogspot.co.uk
10:20 pm
Monday,19 December, 2011
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Sorry to hear about this stolen data. I remember a boat with the generator sign. Were the flowers real, or painted on?
Were you using WIFI, or just the dongle straight from the computer. Did you have the receiver or aerial on the roof? It could be WIFI and would that mean that you could just use the computer without the WIFI, which I only used for certain purposes, such as FaceTime and quick downloads. That is really awful. Can you get the police or an investigator to track this boat. I am sure it is possible and it is illegal of course. I will be sure to take note of this when I arrive in April and get connected once again.
11:21 pm
Saturday,2 March, 2013
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Not wishing in any way to be a scaremonger, but if these folks a ‘cute’ enough to sniff your WiFi credentials, it is not beyond possibility that they could have a mooch around your home network, with all that might entail.
I think you should mention this to the police, it can’t be first time they have done this, but a quiet word from Mr Plod might be enough to make it the last.
Some routers have the option to mail you when they detect a spoof attack, that would warn you at least.
On another point. I recently upgraded my 3 contract, but rather than go for a new handset, I upgraded to a SIM only contract.
For £20 a month, I get 5000 texts, 5000 3 to 3 minutes, 2000 any network minutes and All You Can Eat data on the One Plan
Looking at the mobile data tariffs, it looks much cheaper to go for phone SIM tariffs.
Cheers,
Blakie 
Poole, Dorset … not a canal in sight, but I’m not going to be here for long … Anupadin
7:41 am
Sunday,3 April, 2011
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Hi. This article gives some good information of how your wifi network might be cracked and therefore, how you might prevent it. Not sure how Jools has the wifi set up. I have a Teltonika 3G router which is excellent can’t works just like a router at home but w ith a SIM and an external antenna. Security can be set easily using settings suggested in the article. Hope this helps.
Rob
http://www.technofriends.in/20…..-software/
These are a few of their tips anyway.
1.) Have a MAC level filtering at your router.
2.) Change the default settings of your router’s Web-based administration.
3.) Turn off broadcasting of your SSID.
4.) If you use WEP, use a 128-bit, not a 40-bit WEP encryption key. 128 bit key would take longer to crack. If your wireless router supports it , use WPA or WPA2 instead of WEP. WPA / WPA2 is much secure as compared to WEP.
5.) Use a long and complex WPA Pre-Shared Key. This type of key would have less of a chance of residing in a dictionary file that would be used to try and guess your key and/or would take longer.
6.) To protect yourself from getting Sniffed, ensure you send your login data using HTTPS. Traffic sent over the HTTPS protocol is encrypted, therefore anyone sniffing packets over the network will get garbled text and nothing else.
We recently did a comprehensive article to help our readers secure themselves through 10 steps. You can read all of these in the article titled 10 Steps to Secure Your Wireless Network (Follow them Now!!!)
1:23 pm
Saturday,2 March, 2013
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Hi Rob,
Great tips, but the links are broken (at the moment).
Here are the tips given by the BBC WebWise site …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/g…..ecure-wifi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/g…..-broadband
And we all know, you can never have too much information.
Cheers,
Blakie
Poole, Dorset … not a canal in sight, but I’m not going to be here for long … Anupadin
1:43 pm
Tuesday,21 June, 2011
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Thanks so much everyone for your response and info, it’s all much appreciated.
In fact it was worse than we thought, we’d moved to a different location and once the monthly allowance renewed it was stolen again with not a soul in sight. This means the sim was cloned. The transmit power on our router is low which means the computers/tablets/phones work near the router but the signal is very weak outside, we have firewall, mac filtering, complicated passwords etc. We thought that somebody would have to of had our actual sim to do this but not so:
We purchased a replacement sim for £5, it didn’t affect the contract and everything was as normal once the next monthly allowance renewed. Unfortunately, the only thing we can do is check the allowance, check for anything untoward and hope it doesn’t happen again.
There is no real safety net.
The flowers are painted on…badly!
Thanks
Jools
2:41 pm
Saturday,2 March, 2013
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joolswilliamson said
<snip>
In fact it was worse than we thought, we’d moved to a different location and once the monthly allowance renewed it was stolen again with not a soul in sight. This means the sim was cloned.</snip>
Have you spoken to your ISP / mobile provider about this?
If it is a true cloning incident, you may find that you are covered, like credit card fraud. It’s certainly worth asking the question.
Cheers,
Blakie
Poole, Dorset … not a canal in sight, but I’m not going to be here for long … Anupadin
2:55 pm
Tuesday,21 June, 2011
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joolswilliamson said In fact it was worse than we thought, we’d moved to a different location and once the monthly allowance renewed it was stolen again with not a soul in sight. This means the sim was cloned.
Have you spoken to your ISP / mobile provider about this? If it is a true cloning incident, you may find that you are covered, like credit card fraud. It’s certainly worth asking the question. Cheers, Blakie
I called our service provider, the operator had no clue what I was talking about and after about 20 minutes of ‘asking others’ told me what I was saying was impossible!
My husband went into the 3 shop in Rugby, the boys working in there were uninterested and busy playing computer games! He went into Northampton and inquired and we were provided with the replacement sim for £5.
We have filed it with the data fraud department of Warwickshire police.
There is no insurance, no offer of help because we have no proof, nothing. It’s been very frustrating and as a result we have one contract dongle and two pay as you go dongles that we needed to tide us over until the data renewed. They wouldn’t even bring the renewal date forward! VERY UNHELPFUL!
Thanks
Jools
3:42 pm
Saturday,2 March, 2013
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Hi Jools,
My ex-boss from Vodafone now works for 3 … I’ll see what she can do.
I will probably need your details at some point, but we can leave that until we get a positive response from Jill.
Cheers,
Blakie
Edited ~ I’ve messaged her on FB, so we’ll see what comes of it.
Poole, Dorset … not a canal in sight, but I’m not going to be here for long … Anupadin
8:54 pm
Wednesday,29 February, 2012
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I have a Three sim, unlimited data for £15 month, they wanted £20 but when I went through to cancellations they dropped it to £15
7:35 am
Sunday,3 April, 2011
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I would have thought that actually cloning SIM remotely is near impossible without having access to the actual SIM. I have done some research and come up with very little evidence this this happening. This article is interesting.
http://articles.timesofindia.i…..snl-office
If those guys on that boat can do stuff like that, they must be pretty clued up. I couldn’t see anything on that Live Science link as that would have been interesting to read.
Sorry for you problems though Jools. Hope you are ok with the new SIM
10:35 pm
Monday,19 December, 2011
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That is a very scary story. Cloning a SIM as well. Bad enough stealing the data. It must have been a very frightening experience. I am sure that there should be enough evidence found to blow those so and sos out of the water, as it were!
I will certainly keep an eye out for them. I did not use much WiFi on our boat, just mainly 3-G dongle. That may be safer. WiFi broadcasts to all around. Dongle is just like having your phone. I also switch off everything when not using the network and keep an eye on my data usage.
10:41 pm
Monday,19 December, 2011
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I have a number of pictures of that particular boat you describe, one of them is on Flickr. It is very distinctive. I just went back and did a bit of detective work, as I have a good camera, picking up details. They have wiring coming out of a Buckby can fore of the boat, and a Silver TV aerial not being used nearby. In another picture, there is a very interesting and powerful looking aerial at the rear of the boat. This does not look like a normal TV aerial. There is a picture of it on Flickr in this set.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/h…..1607730014
Another thing that occurred to me is that it is rather strange that such people on such a conspicuous and recognisable boat would do such a thing, but perhaps they have a friend who told them he/she could get them ‘free’ internet access, and set up their electronic devices for them, and they would be ignorant of how serious this is. I have friends who get people they know, rather than professionals set up their systems for them. I would hate to put myself into someone’s hands like that. These people would have their passwords, and could do anything they wanted on their friend’s machines.
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