Calling all VirginMedia Customers
Discussion
daddy cool said:
'*s
t myself when he took control of my PC and his mouse hovered over "uTorrent", and then he fired up Chrome to do a speedtest and i had to say "no, use Internet Explorer to do a speedtest" (my Chrome runs through a dutch proxy so that i can access Piratebay & KAT etc!)
t myself when he took control of my PC and his mouse hovered over "uTorrent", and then he fired up Chrome to do a speedtest and i had to say "no, use Internet Explorer to do a speedtest" (my Chrome runs through a dutch proxy so that i can access Piratebay & KAT etc!)
I bet he was chuckling to himself as he was doing it, knowing that you'd be s
tting yourself when he saw it 
.
Oakey said:
can you even have the TV and broadband without phone line?
I don't know about the TV, but I have just the broadband with Virgin and there is no requirement to have a phone line. My phone line is with BT and completely independent of the broadband which is fibre to the cabinet and then coaxial cable from cabinet to my house. Oakey said:
can you even have the TV and broadband without phone line?
I think it's forced on you which is a bit of a scam. You know you won't use it, they know you won't use it but they're going to take that £17 a month off you anyway!
When I contacted Virgin last year to remove my phone as I never use it. They told me that it's cheaper to keep the phone on the package due to discounts. I think it's forced on you which is a bit of a scam. You know you won't use it, they know you won't use it but they're going to take that £17 a month off you anyway!
The ONLY reason they want you to take the phone line is because that is the most profitable product for them and they hope you'll use it to make calls. They make peanuts on the internet and telly products in comparison. The phone service comes down the same bit of wire so it's no extra cost to them if you're having one or both of the others.
daddy cool said:
'*st myself when he took control of my PC and ....
You seriously allowed them to take control of your PC ?!t myself when he took control of my PC and ....Not a chance I would allow them on mine. I also found out the other day they have access to the superhubs and thus your internal network (unless you stick a firewall in the way).
Unless there was no other option there is no way I would use an ISP that implemented these practices.
All that jazz said:
The ONLY reason they want you to take the phone line is because that is the most profitable product for them and they hope you'll use it to make calls. They make peanuts on the internet and telly products in comparison. The phone service comes down the same bit of wire so it's no extra cost to them if you're having one or both of the others.
Ironically I unplugged our phone line after I got the first phone bill from them and saw the call costs, and it's never been plugged back in since. Way too expensive. If they weren't so greedy with the call costs I'd be using it all the time! cornet said:
daddy cool said:
'*st myself when he took control of my PC and ....
You seriously allowed them to take control of your PC ?!t myself when he took control of my PC and ....Not a chance I would allow them on mine. I also found out the other day they have access to the superhubs and thus your internal network (unless you stick a firewall in the way).
Unless there was no other option there is no way I would use an ISP that implemented these practices.
cornet said:
daddy cool said:
'*st myself when he took control of my PC and ....
You seriously allowed them to take control of your PC ?!t myself when he took control of my PC and ....Not a chance I would allow them on mine.
WinstonWolf said:
The tin foil hat is strong... They will need remote access to the router for diagnostic purposes (it's their kit after all) but that doesn't give them access to your devices other than to be able to see ARP tables/routes/port forwards etc.
If they have access to connect to the router they basically have access to your internal network. Any shares you have on your network without authentication they can get access to.daddy cool said:
Being that I was calling THEM asking them to fix a fault, and they had exhausted all other checks, my options were either to let them (only took a minute) or hang up the phone (my issue remains unresolved). However, when i had to call back a few minutes later and they needed to access the computer again, this time i used my works laptop and said "this will prove i get the same speeds on a different device" (though obviously in reality its because my works laptop isnt completely geared up for vast amounts of online piracy)
Many ISPs manage to resolve issues like this without needing access. I don't see why Virgin can't do the same.Yes it might seem "tin-foil hat" but I work from home managing 100s of remote servers and have to adhere to PCI rules.. Both my workstation and laptop are used for work purposes. I simply can't take the risk of letting some random in a call centre having access to either.
Even if I wasn't using them for work purposes someone could do enough damage in a few minutes of access.
WinstonWolf said:
So the HH is passing SMB packets is it?
Do you mean the SuperHub ?No, it won't pass packets to the outside network interface.
My parents have Virgin Internet and phoned about a problem recently. During the conversation they said they had connected to the router and began listing the devices, along with the internal IP addresses, on my parents internal network.
Thankfully they only see 2 devices. A little monitoring box that I have their which is plugged directly into the super hub and the laptop my Dad was using for testing at the time. They couldn't see anything else because the rest of the network is behind another router (because I don't trust routers supplied by ISPs for this reason).
I would hope that Virgin have enough security restrictions in place so that call centre operatives can't do this but what happened is enough to convince me it's theoretically possible.
Oh and the "problem" which Virgin Media failed to diagnose correctly was their crappy DNS servers being really slow to resolve. Took me about 5 minutes to work it out over the phone with my Dad and get it fixed without using any sort of remote access.
WinstonWolf said:
It's perfectly normal and necessary to see network traffic when you're diagnosing your equipment, how else can technicians fault find.
All the ISPs that I've used have managed to do it since I use my own router.WinstonWolf said:
VM having remote router access doesn't compromise your internal security.
Depends on what access they have and how it's secured. If they just have a login to do what they want (add firewall rules, setup their own port forwards etc...) then they could, in theory, do what they hell they wanted.It's part of Virgin's network, they can push firmware updates and remotely reboot it etc. You're being exceptionally paronoid if you think a Virgin employee/contractor is interested in your network.
Remote management means they can quickly differentiate between faulty equipment and misconfigured end user kit.
Are you certain your existing ISP isn't sniffing your traffic because we both know they can
Remote management means they can quickly differentiate between faulty equipment and misconfigured end user kit.
Are you certain your existing ISP isn't sniffing your traffic because we both know they can
WinstonWolf said:
It's part of Virgin's network, they can push firmware updates and remotely reboot it etc. You're being exceptionally paronoid if you think a Virgin employee/contractor is interested in your network.
Remote management means they can quickly differentiate between faulty equipment and misconfigured end user kit.
Are you certain your existing ISP isn't sniffing your traffic because we both know they can
I'm fully aware they can sniff traffic leaving my network, anything important though is encrypted via SSL and/or VPN.Remote management means they can quickly differentiate between faulty equipment and misconfigured end user kit.
Are you certain your existing ISP isn't sniffing your traffic because we both know they can
I appreciate why it helps Virgin Media and of course they probably aren't interested in 99% of the people connected. For most people the security trade off is acceptable but it's not one I would be willing to make.
I even run various devices on their own separate network at my house because I don't trust them fully.
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