Hey guys,
So first of all - I live with my little brother, we’re both in our 20s. We watch streams here and there, we both own a smart TV, watch Youtube here and there, we both own PCs, and phones which are in the WIFI most of the time.
We’re not streaming / gaming 24/7, but more like a 3-4 hour gaming session every few days in the evening, maybe some Youtube here and there.
We don’t download huge games, we don’t upload anything at all, besides maybe an image here and there, or some videos over Whatsapp.
Today I checked my router because I feel like my internet’s just weird for whatever reason. I then found the “data usage” section on my router, and was kinda… surprised.
1.650.000MB of data used in the last month, 1,500,000MB this month, download. Upload, around 500,000MB last month, 450,000MB this month.
Let me mention that we’re running a 100mbit/s connection, with 50mbit/s upload.
Isn’t this weird for some reason? We’re not huge gamers, we live alone, this is our router, and nobody else is in it. We just enjoy watching streams in the evening, mostly just Youtube, and that’s it already.
For two people, non-technical, not using it a ton, it is EXTREMELY high. I never even got close to that much usage with 3 kids playing youtube non-stop in the living room, while using tablets at the same time, 2 adult phones for social media Tik-Tok, etc, two gaming PC’s being used pretty much non-stop, and a two other TVs in the house with streaming services.
My best guess is the TV’s and the RGB strip could be infected with an IoT malware such as Mirai or another one, and is being used as part of a botnet. I would either disable the TV, segregate it off the network for monitoring, or do a MAC filter on your router and block the TV and light strip from the internet for a while and see if your usage goes down. I would also update the firmware on the TV’s and change the password, and check online if your TV is one of the ones with a backdoor “service” account that can’t be removed/changed via firmware.