Excessive Internet Usage

[mebwm]

I have two desktop iMacs, an iPad and an iPhone. One desktop is two years old and the other one is much older. The ipad is 3 years old and the iPhone is 1 year old.
I  never download music, movies or pictures and I have changed my wifi password three times in the past three months and the one I am using now is a long series of letters, signs and numerals. Rogers has replaced my modem but it has not helped.

Up until May I never used more than 12 gigs a month total usage
Here is my usage for the past seven months:
Jan. - 6 gigs, Feb. - 10 gigs, Mar. - 9 gigs, April 12 gigs, May - 72 gigs, In June I started turning off the wifi each time I left the computer and I still used 32 gigs. July's usage was 27 gigs and I was still turning off the wifi as in June. Even then my usage fluctuated with a high on July 21 of 6048 gigs for just that one day.
On August 3rd I turned off all the devices except the 2 year old iMac and I just checked my emails with no other browsing and my daily total was 839 MB.

What could be causing this problem? I know it must be something in my settings because when I turn off the wifi on all the devices and do not use my computers at all the usage for that 24 hour period will be nil.
Thank you.
Mary

[Dan Millar]

Hi!

Sorry for the delay in replying, but I have been away a few months. Is it possible someone is hitching a ride on your wireless network? Is your router's home network "hidden"? In other words, do you have to type in the name of your network to make a connection? If it is "public", i.e., not "hidden", and you are using a "weak" encryption like WEP, then it isn't hard for others to hitch a ride. Your network should be hidden AND using strong encryption like WPA to be secure.

You can tell if someone is hitching a ride through your router's interface - you may need someone who understands all this techno-babble to have a look , like your Rogers or Bell service people or a family member who speaks geek.

Other than that, it could be malicious software on your computer, which, it being a Mac, is highly unlikely, but not impossible. You will need a nerd/tech/genius to figure this out, but start with your internet provider - they should do this for free, but may not. If they installed your network in the first place, they would be responsible for those security settings, and they don't always follow what some of us would call "best practices". If they didn't install a hidden SSID with WPA encryption, then they did not setup up your network to be secure from hitch-hikers, and it is their responsibility to do so, therefore the service should be free.

Let us know if this helps, or where it takes you in your investigations, 'k? In the meantime...

Happy Mac'ing!

Dan

[mebwm]

I finally discovered the problem. There was an app called Akamai on both my iMacs. When that was removed everything went back to normal. Hope this helps someone else.