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I have a small problem for which I haven't found a solution yet.

I live in Bosnia and share the Internet connection with the landlady, and as is usual in Bosnia, we do not have a flat rate, but a 15 Giga traffic limite. That would actually be more than enough, if the son of the landlady wouldn't be watching videos all the time, so the bills are truning out rather expensive.

I have already installed a traffic monitoring program, but he apparently turns it off as soon as he comes close to his limit and then denies that he consumed any more. I therefore need at least a measurement program that is password protected and / or notes in the log when it's been turned off. Even better would be a program that just cuts his access when he exceeds his share, ie a mixture of Traffic meter and Parental Guard. Can someone help me out here?

Mehper C. Palavuzlar
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UncleBob
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3 Answers3

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If he sits down at the computer and has admin access, it's game over. There's nothing you can do at that computer that he can't also undo and cover his tracks. One alternative is to do the monitoring at your edge device (cable/dsl modem, wireless router, etc). If you have a router that supports dd-wrt, you can install monitoring software on there, and he'll have a much harder time accessing it (or even knowing anything has is being recorded).

Joel Coehoorn
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1

Hm, you don't really explain your configuration. It would help if you briefly sketch your setup:

  • how many computers?
  • What kind of internet access? How?
  • How are the systems networked? (diagram, network technology)
  • Which monitoring program did you install?

That said, I assume from your question that you all share one computer and you just installed a monitoring software on it.

In that case, your only real option is to restrict the misbehaving user to a non-administrator account / not give root access, or monitor through something not installed on the computer. With full access on the computer, every monitoring program can be disabled/uninstalled.

If you all have separate computers, the best bet is to use a router/switch (dedicated, or separate PC) that can meter traffic. If only you have the admin password (and noone can rewire the network), that cannot be circumvented. Unfortunately, I don't know any cheap home router that supports this.

If it has to be all on one system, give the user a restricted account. If that is not feasible, there's little you can do. You can problably try to find a monitor that hides or logs its activity, but with admin rights you can subvert everything, so it'll be an ongoing struggle...

Or you might want to find a social solution (i.e. talk to him) :-). But I guess you already tried that...

sleske
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Solution 1:

Use CHP (Create Hidden Process) to start up your network traffic monitor. This way, the traffic meter will not be visible in Task Manager and cannot be killed.

Administrator privileges won't be useful if you don't know what to kill!

Solution 2:

Make your Internet connection dependent on the Traffic Monitor.

Example: Create an AutoIt Script that monitors the existence of the Traffic Monitor Process. If it fails to find the process, it should:

  1. Fill the hosts file with 127.0.0.1 for ALL popular websites.
  2. Kill all running browsers and their respective process threads.
  3. Kill all popular torrent downloaders.
  4. Kill ANYTHING that needs a network connection!

If you choose method 2, you can compile the AutoIt script as an exe and give it a name such as svcchost.exe and set it for startup!

Gareth
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adeelx
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