BSNL In Bangalore is making news by what could be a major fraud in the Public sector organization. BSNL provides different types of Internet access services. Under the UL 900 plan it provides unlimited download at a speed of 256 Kbps. On the other hand, it provides two other plans namely Home 250 and Home 500, for users with limited data download/upload but at a 2MBps speed.
Increasingly, the customers of BSNL broadband under the Home 250 and 500 are finding that their data usage is exceeding the normal usage and they are billed for exorbitant amounts. Atleast in some of these cases it has been found that people have misused the bandwidths of others by hacking into modems, using the standard passwords which BSNL assigns by default.
The undersigned has been informed that in certain cases, on receiving complaints, BSNL has identified the actual users and charged them reversing the inflated bills of the victims. However they have not taken any penal action on the persons who have mis-used the system.
An investigative exploration raises a serious doubt that these incidents may not be isolated events. It can be observed that BSNL has made a fundamental mistake in structuring its tariff plan by introducing a higher bandwidth for limited data traffic users and lower bandwidth for unlimited data traffic users. After the introduction of IP TV and other data heavy usages, there appears to be a possibility of some to heavy data users may be trying to steal high bandwidth from other users. Since high bandwidth is available only with the limited data traffic users, the stealing of bandwidth results in stealing of data traffic as well.
It is possible that some BSNL employees may be hand in glove with some heavy users to systematically help them steal bandwidth from others. Otherwise there is no logic why BSNL is not initiating any action against the offenders.
It is also found that when one of the victims tried to lodge a complaint with the Cyber Crime Police Station in Bangalore, he has been told that no complaint can be registered since the offence does not fall under ITA 2000.
Naavi.org therefore urges BSNL to institute an enquiry to find out how many cases of data traffic misuse have been brought to their notice and whether there is any pattern in this problem which indicates a “Fraud”.
Cyber Crime PS should take the lead and register a suo-moto case and investigate the matter to clear their name as well as to safeguard the public interest.
Naavi
www.naavi.org
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3 users commented in " Let BSNL and Cyber Crime Police Station Come out Clean "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackDear Naavi,
Thanks for hi-liting this issue. A friend of mine from Guwahti reported heavy misuse of his BSNL plan. Clearly his a/c was hacked as his usage shows downloads at odd hours.
BSNL Assam is unable to trace the culprits or identify the IP from where the usage originated. Do you know how the Bangalore team did this. This will help my friend save lacs in bill charges.
I wonder if our anti-terrorist team is looking into this issue. It would be awful for anti-nationals to hack into BSNL modems that are pre-configured and misuse the net for thier vile motives. BSNL needs to make the system tighter.
Thanks for any help you can offer,
Best,
I got internet bill for 30000 rupees for 1 month for 250 plan in Bangalore TD.
As per bill 29GB was downloaded. When we to office the lady argued that 29GB will cost 30000 rupees and bandwidth of 8GB reaches 30000 in no time.
Letter of complaint was given. Reply was that activity was correct.
Only thing left is not to pay any bill.
Stupid people . Stupid service. Stupid name.
Barath Limited Sanchar Nigum appears to be limited service fraud organization.
Hi guys,
I have been receiving exorbitant bills from bsnl.I have a 1 Gb limit but last month i was billed for 4.5 Gb usage which was shocking to say the least.I do not stay at home cause i study at a college and stay in the hostel.But my parents stay alone at home and they dont use even 500MB is my guess.I came for hols recently and spent a day changing analysing the situation.I changed the router password , the connection password and the portal password and also enabled the firewall of the router and set the settings such that no one from outside the network can use Http or Ftp via my router.I kept the router on the whole day just to see what is happening.When i checked the usage details on the portal website at the end of the day i was astonished.Out of 130 MB usage that was shown i figured that 90MB was used at a time when no one was at home.This is just perplexing.Thus i seek help in realising the extent of this problem and what r the possible solutions.I know that bsnl will never hear me out patiently and do somethinng about it. Is it that bsnl billing is flawed or is it that somebody is connecting via my router? Keenly awaiting responses.Cheers.
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