Can hackers use my BB account?

Question

Having been a BT customer for over 30 years and a BB user since inception, my BB usage is fairly low, just for occasional internet and emails. On renewal of BB contract, a BT sales person advised me to downgrade to Option 1 due to low use.  Over the last 12 months my use averages 2MB per month.  This month for the first time ever, I had an email alert to let me know I was almost at the 10MB limit.  I looked at the usage monitor which is not very helpful - does not break down into days of the month - just total monthly usage.  I have been working away for parts of April and am certain this is not my use.  I live alone and no one else has access to my WPA key.
I called BT billing who told me what my average use was over the last 12 months (as above) but they do not have info (to give me) of what the use is for and on what days.  The usage monitor is geared to letting you know when you have reached the limit so that you can upgrade, it would be easy to show more than one day at a time - giving a true monthly picture.  In early April, I had several emails from Yahoo asking me to verify my email address by clicking on a link, which I did. I did not suspect spam as I was not asked for any passwords. BT tech help told me it was spam and I could have been infected by a virus without giving a p/word.  So - sorry to take so long but is is possible this is who is using my BB?  BT are not helping - just want to charge me for extra use. How do I prove this is not my use when BT will not give me any more info? Hope someone can help, spent 2 hours being passed around BT yesterday, no further forward, no answers or help - just extra charges!

Answer 1

FedupwithmyISP wrote:
Having been a BT customer for over 30 years and a BB user since inception, my BB usage is fairly low, just for occasional internet and emails. On renewal of BB contract, a BT sales person advised me to downgrade to Option 1 due to low use.  Over the last 12 months my use averages 2MB per month.  This month for the first time ever, I had an email alert to let me know I was almost at the 10MB limit.  I looked at the usage monitor which is not very helpful - does not break down into days of the month - just total monthly usage.  I have been working away for parts of April and am certain this is not my use.  I live alone and no one else has access to my WPA key.
I called BT billing who told me what my average use was over the last 12 months (as above) but they do not have info (to give me) of what the use is for and on what days.  The usage monitor is geared to letting you know when you have reached the limit so that you can upgrade, it would be easy to show more than one day at a time - giving a true monthly picture.  In early April, I had several emails from Yahoo asking me to verify my email address by clicking on a link, which I did. I did not suspect spam as I was not asked for any passwords. BT tech help told me it was spam and I could have been infected by a virus without giving a p/word.  So - sorry to take so long but is is possible this is who is using my BB?  BT are not helping - just want to charge me for extra use. How do I prove this is not my use when BT will not give me any more info? Hope someone can help, spent 2 hours being passed around BT yesterday, no further forward, no answers or help - just extra charges!
Hi. Welcome to the forums.
Does the alert email say your usage was for May ?, and does the online meter show pretty much the same figure ?
Those verification emails, were they entitled Yahoo! Email Address confirmation ? If so then they were almost certainly genuine, and probably one of two reasons. Either someone has entered your email address by mistake when setting up address verification to use a different (non btinternet) address, or it was a scammer doing the same.
By clicking the link, this may allow someone to send emails using your email address (but not get into your account) - however they will need to know the password as well.
Go to http://mail.yahoo.com - login with your full email address. The click on Options/More (or mail) options, and then Accounts on the left. If there are any email addresses listed (click on any of the list, it will show the email address) that you don't know, you can delete them.
However any of this won't actually mean that your usage will be used up, it's a separate issue. The usage meter can be checked every day and the usage recorded on a spreadsheet or even paper - hence build up a daily usage.
Have you used anything like iPlayer, catch up tv or football online ? Do you use facebook etc ? Many of these applications can use 500-1000MB per hour, with some facebook applications many 100s of MB per day. So it's not too hard to rack up usage.
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