I hate computers !!

We have been plagued with very high internet usage over the last 3 or 4 months.

We pay for 80 GB per month which should be quite enough since neither of us download movies or music and rarely watch TV on-line. Last October we used almost 250 GB & since then have averaged 120 GB or so.
We pay $1.50 for each extra GB to a max of $50. So far about $100 in excess usage fees.

Cogeco suggested someone must have gotten into our wireless network so we changed both the name & password ($30 since we wanted it done quickly & neither of us knew how to do it) but still high usage.

We then took the wireless router completely out & had only Marion's desktop connected directly the internet - still high!!

We ran a couple of days with just the laptop connected then just my old computer - still high.

The techs at Cogeco then suggested we must have a virus in all 3 computers & this diagnosis was confirmed by a couple of computer guys we talked to so we took both of Marion's computers to the shop & had them cleaned up ($200). My computer was an old used model we bought about 18 months ago so rather than clean it up we just replaced with another used cpu ($100).

Still high usage !!

The latest idea is that someone out there has our IP address & is using it to do whatever people like that do.

Cogeco techs tell us changing the IP address on our account is very difficult & they don't want to do it but they suggest that if we changed our residential account to a business account then we would get a new IP address. This would cost an extra $7/month but we would get 120 GB per month usage with no charge if we exceed that (wonder why they say 120 GB per month then??).
According to them the biggest change for us would be that our e-mail addresses would end in ".net" instead of ".ca".

Right now we see low internet usage on Tuesday followed by high days Wednesday & Thursday then another low day on Friday.

We will watch our usage over the weekend & if there are any high usage days then I think we'll do the business thing on Monday but the way things are going I think I'll keep my credit card ready for the next suggested remedy :)