Hey guys,

Wondering if you can help shed some light on this. I woke up this morning and went to use my computer and found that I had issues logging into my e-mail account. Kept getting a 403: Access Denied message. Finally I deleted my cookies/cache and rebooted, only to then find that I was getting a "quarantined" message from my ISP.

I'll start off by saying I'm not a saint, but I'm also not a chronic offender. However, I knew for a fact that I had not done anything illegal on the interwebs in recent history.

I called up my ISP to see what was going on. I was immediately transferred to the security department and spoke with a representative. She told me that there had been "multiple copyright infringements" on my IP address spanning from July all the way to today. She listed 4 separate instances where my IP was flagged.

July 27 - "Right above it again" Lil Wayne
Aug 6 - "Wall to wall" Chris Brown
Aug 10 - "Right above it" Lil Wayne
Aug 20 - "Motivation" Kelly Rowland

None of these are anything I have ever downloaded, or even listened to for that matter. I obviously denied that I had anything to do with this, she asked if I used a router, to which I responded "yes" but let her know that I had an WPA2 encryption on the router so I was unsure how anyone could have gotten past that.

She removed the suspension on my account and now everything is fine. However, I am seriously concerned with how this happened to begin with. I have run a virus scan (using MalwareBytes) and haven't found any viruses on my system. Everything seems to be operating just fine. I live in an apartment complex, but I highly doubt that someone hacked into my router somehow (I guess this is still possible though).

tl;dr I received a warning by my ISP for copyright infringement (which I absolutely did not do). I am wondering if there's a possibility that the IP address they are associating with me could possibly be switching between the offender and myself, or if there is a more likely scenario that anyone can come up with that could shed some light on this. I have no idea if there would also be a way to track this if they were by some chance hacking into my router.

Also, I have since changed my WPA2 password just to make sure that isn't the issue, but I am really leaning toward that not being the problem based on the "content" that was downloaded.

Just a guess, but depending on how the DHCP leasing works, the IP may have been assigned to someone else at the time of the offense. But I'm not a network engineer so I don't know for sure. Tell them to **** off and be more thorough in their investigation (politely).

Is your ISP Comcast?

Time Warner (RoadRunner)

Most likely someone ****ed up at the RIAA. ISPs know when DHCP leases are active at what time (it's logged), so the only reason that'd get messed up is because the RIAA gave them a wrong time and/or IP. Welcome to the ****lords that are the RIAA. Definitely do not back down on things like this.

Edit: the other possibility is that you have a trojan on one of your PCs that is acting as a proxy/etc for someone. Make sure to scan all of your machines thoroughly. BTW, MalwareBytes is not a comprehensive anti-virus program, it's mostly just for general malware. Get Microsoft Security Essentials, it's free and way better than most.

I'm not familiar with how the RIAA corresponds with the ISP. Are they the ones who track the IP to begin with and then notify the ISP or is it the other way around? Also, I have security essentials as well, and scanned my system with both programs. I'm just worried that if this continues (which is likely assuming this is some kind of IP mix-up) they are going to try to take some legal action against me for something that I am not even remotely involved with.

The ISP doesn't track jack ****. It'd cost them outrageous money to do so.

The RIAA tracks IP addresses off of public torrents and other sources, logs them, and then requests (or in the case of good ISPs, subpoenas) the ISP of that IP address for the person's info. At first they'll just make the ISP send a warning to the owner of the account, but they can pursue it legally if they find repeat offenders. The RIAA just tells the ISP what the IP was, and what time it was logged.

And yeah, legal action could eventually be possible, but you could probably counter-sue and get some cash out of it. Thing is, there's nothing you can do about it to stop this from happening (other than not actually committing the crime).

So with the RIAA giving the IP address, wouldn't that be the IP address coming from my router? If so, would removing the router from the equation get rid of the problem altogether? I only plan on being in this complex for another couple of months anyway so I guess I could get by on just using my modem. (Assuming this would have any positive impact at all).

It'd change your IP address but I wouldn't bother if you've only got a couple months left.