This week I discovered that one of my Telkom ADSL accounts had been stolen. My God! I feel so… so… South African! I am the victim of a crime that is more significant than the time someone stole the brass “8″ off the front of my house!
What happened was that I capped my primary ADSL account last week and tried to switch over to my backup account that I have not used since about December 2007. I found that I could not log into the backup account, and called the dreaded Telkom for assistance.
After holding for about half an hour on the 10215 line, I got a really helpful operator who discovered that someone was already logged into that account. He reset the password for me, and I determined that someone had used about 900Mb of bandwidth before we reset the password. He also forwarded the case to the abuse department. (It makes me giggle to think that there are people who work for the “Telkom Abuse Department”.)
Nothing happened for a while, and I assumed that nothing would be happening at all. Today, however, I received a phone call from Sean of the Abuse Department, confirming that someone with an 011 area code had been using my account. He recommended that I resent the password on both the account and my router, both of which had already been done.
Sean of the Abuse Department, however, was not allowed to give me the phone number of the person that stole my account. He advised me that, in order to do something about it, I would need to call in the assistance of the South African Police. Curiously, I am not able to mail Sean directly. He suggested that, if I have any more questions, I call 10215, hold for another 30 minutes, and then ask whoever answers to E-mail him. This is why people hate Telkom so much!
I will include the E-mail that Sean sent me in full at the end of this post. In short, I would need to lay a charge with the police in order to obtain a case number. The the police would need to subpoena Telkom so that Sean can give them the number that he is not allowed to read to me off his screen. The police would then send Inspector Morse or someone over to beat the perpetrator with a rubber hose, but only if my dream world were reality, which it is not.
As amusing as it would be to go down to the Table View Police Station with my Internet problems, I shall not. I happen to have on hand the latest crime statistics for Table View, straight from the desk of Inspector Nolan. Aside from urging us not to “contribute to crime by being negligent,” and telling us that “Jesus Christ is the exclamation mark after the words ‘God is love!’,” his station’s newsletter also gives us arrest statistics for January 2008 in Table View:
Assault: 5
Murder: 3
Rape: 1
Possession of fire arm (sic): 5
House Breaking & Theft: 3
Robbery: 2
Posession/Dealing: Drugs (sic): 19
Actually, I think this is pretty good! I think that Inspector Nolan is the exclamation mark after the words “Pretty Good!” I’m not about to waste his precious time by sending him on a pointless chase after some immoral Gauteng geek that robbed me of a Gigabyte’s worth of data transfer.
This wouldn’t even be an issue if it wasn’t for the fact that Telkom charge me R65.48 for the amount of bandwidth that was used. That, I think, is what Inspector Nolan should really be investigating.
The E-mail from Sean of the Abuse Department is reproduced below, for those of you that are interested in what happens in these situations. All bad grammar belongs to Telkom. I have only removed some underscores to make it readable.
To the person that stole my account, you may have gotten away with it this time, but I still think that you are the blood-drenched cross at the end of a teen aged goth’s angsty love poetry. Screw you.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for mailing Telkom Internet Abuse.
We have reviewed your logs which indicates that your connection was used from different locations. If this was not authorized by you and require further investigation, you will need to
report this to your local police station and obtain a case number. A Section 205 subpoena will then need to be made out against us so we can issue the police with the details of where the connections were made from.
______How to obtain a Subpoena_______
Please note that the following information is to be added on to the subpoena.
First of all, it is very important to make the Section 205 Subpoena out against Telkomsa.
On the subpoena the following must be requested:
1. The telephone number associated with the ports identified.
2. The registered owner details of the telephone numbers identified.
3. The physical installation address of the telephone numbers identified.
Please remember to add your username details.
Once the subpoena has been received by the investigating officer, the investigating officer has to hand the original subpoena to their Technical Support Unit (TSU). The officer at the TSU
will know who the identified person in Telkom is to accept the subpoena on our behalf.
In the interim we strongly suggest that you change your internet password. Go to the ADSL Password Tool at http://www.telkomsa.net.
If you are using an ADSL router, we recommend that you also change that password.
Security has to start with the ADSL router as all ADSL routers are despatched with a factory default setting for the administration of control functions. Normally a router can be accessed from both the internet and your PC. However if the adminstration password is not reset to something of your choice then any malicious Internet user will gain access to the same functions from the Internet and in doing so will extract from the router your username and password, and it can be done in a matter of seconds.
Prevention can be achieved by, either changing the adminstrator username and password or by activating the router to what is called “bridged mode”. The Bridged mode option then requires you the user,to make use of a PPPoE session which then requires a “click” to connection option versus a “always on option”
It is also advisable to make sure that the firewall on the router is enabled.
Should you experience difficulties in making the necessary changes to your router, kindly contact our helpdesk on 10215 and an agent will assist you.
Kind regards,
Telkom Internet Abuse
E Mail – abuse@telkomsa.net
Tel: 10215
International: +27 12 678 5502
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NB: This e-mail and its contents are subject to the Telkom SA Limited
e-mail legal notice which can be viewed at:
http://www.telkom.co.za/TelkomEMailLegalNotice.PDF
Should you be unable to access the link provided, a copy of the legal notice
will be e-mailed to you on sending a blank e-mail to
legalnotice@telkom.co.za
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The product was an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro graphics accelerator. Unfortunately it proved really difficult to take a good picture through the glass, so I didn’t get a good shot of the whole box. However, without doubt, that sticker says, “Lekker 3 Years Warranty.”