O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Broadband > Primus Canada cracking down on usage?

Primus Canada cracking down on usage?

160? Thats it?

~300G here and not a peep from Sympatico.
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My freedom is a debt to Hitler.

reply to Anomalous
They're not cancelling you because you're running a server, but because the 160GB/month.

reply to Anomalous
I got the same email today, I use 80G/month.
but when I called Primus, they don't even know such email was sent...did someone call and find out wut's going on?

reply to Anomalous
I did 600GB a couple months back on sympatico, no word at all

reply to Anomalous
I got one this morning too.
Last months stats: 64GB down, 34 up. Very very roughly, that probably breaks down as usenet: 30GB down, BitTorrent: 30 GB up plus 30GB down. Plus extra b/w on other PCs in the house, but I doubt that that's more than a GB or two each either way. Given Primus' continued "no download cap" stance, I suspect the problem is the upload volume.

Haven't rung them yet - will see if I can get some agreement about an acceptable upload volume.

Kinda scary cos if they refuse to cancel the disconnection I don't know where else to go! We're painfully short of ISPs with a >10GB/month cap here in the lower mainland.

What do they advertise? Unlimited? If so, this is a very stupid tactic, they dont even give the user a chance to lower their usage.
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reply to Anomalous
»www.primustel.ca/en/residential/···west.htm
says "Unlimited use - No cap on downloads!"

But no mention about uploads and of course the 'system abuse' section of the FAQ, quoted above, can always be used to deal with any activity they don't like.

I'm presuming that there's a way out of this. Termination with no opportunity to change usage is a bizarre way of doing business. Heck, I'm not even running a server like they're suggesting. OK, yes, I know that BitTorrent is accepting incoming connections but surely it's a client program (*bats eyelids innocently*).

reply to Anomalous
They're not cancelling anyone. It's just spam.

Received: from exprod8mx2.postini.com ([64.18.3.102] helo=psmtp.com) by smtp-06.primus.ca with smtp (Exim 4.43) id 1EY3H7-00039W-FV for 1747018@primus.ca; Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:14:41 -0500
Received: from source ([216.254.136.57]) by exprod8mx2.postini.com ([64.18.7.10]) with SMTP; Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:14:29 EST

Postini is handling primus.ca mail, looks legit to me.

reply to tumble
I'm not convinced. The IP address of the apparent source machine in the headers matches that of Primus' mailing list server (lists.primus.ca)

reply to nyt
You can call them to verify, theyll tell you that its spam. Atleast thats what they told me.

reply to Anomalous
(on hold as we speak - I'd forgotten how long it takes to talk to someone at Primus!)

If you get the email, don't click on the "view entire AUP" link. It doesn't go to where it appears to go to, but to an URL that has a number encoded in it - which matches the number in the email address to which the email was originally sent. I guess this is their way of confirming receipt.

reply to Anomalous
OK. Customer support didn't know anything about it (said "we've never sent anything like that to our customers"), suggested it was spam but offered to transfer me to technical support.

Technical support also didn't specifically have anything to say about my account but she said she's asked around and this *is* spam. Told me to delete it and run a virus check. Odd cos there's no attachments and the only two links in it are the mailto link for customer.care and the lists.primus.ca link (which pretends to be the AUP link).

I'll still be worried when I get up on the 14th November though *LOL*! When you speak to an individual at a large company I'm always scared - just cos the person you speak to says something doesn't confirm in my mind that there isn't someone else there who's going to take different action.

reply to Anomalous
Funny thing, they spelled Telecommunications wrong.

reply to Anomalous
Yes is an hoax !

reply to Anomalous
A couple of good points have been raised:

I didn't have time to examine this closely before I left this morning. Not only does the link point to a very different, apparently unique URL, but the email also contains an image bug, which looks very similar to the AUP URL. It wouldn't surprise me if this was just default behaviour of the mailing list software responsible.

Interestingly, there's a "List-Unsubscribe:" header on the email. I wonder what would happen if I unsubscribed myself? :P

That said, I still think this looks legit. The recording on the Customer Support number says their office is closed, I'll try tommorow morning. I'm so looking forward to spending a half-hour on hold.

Another user speculated this might be related to upstream usage, which is entirely possible - of my average 160GB/month, 60GB of that is always upload - I run the upstream pretty much full-tilt.

[rant]
What the hell is wrong with Western Canada? I fully realize my usage is heavier than most, and I do run my personal domain out of my home. I'm willing to pay $60 or $70/mo for my internet connection, but no-one will take my money. It's either "Be a good little pigeon for $40/mo and don't use any bandwidth" or "We'll give you business class after you prove you're a long running business with a good credit record.". I'm not asking for credit, nor am I a business, [scream]I JUST WANT A FUCKING CONNECTION![/scream]
[/rant]

I hadn't spotted the image bug in the HTML. Odd that Thunderbird didn't spot that & warn me either.

I'm fairly sure that this has actually come from Primus as I've had emails with "lists.primus.ca" in them before. I've got one in front of me dated 22/9 which is an advert for TalkBroadband. Again it's sent to {unique-number}@primus.ca rather than my actual email account (the same unique number as the AUP email). Again the message ID is from lists.primus.ca, again the source machine appears to be called "source" and again the return path is to lists.primus.ca. All the links on the TalkBroadband message are also pointed to lists.primus.ca/t/{big number}/{big number}/{small number}/0 same as they are in this AUP email.

The question is, did the email go out by mistake (maybe to everybody on Primus!) or are they actually disconnecting us & the front desk just doesn't know anything about it. And if it DID go out by mistake then why do they have this email ready to go on this list server? Tends to imply that they might be about to start kicking people off for real.

I run my BitTorrent with the upstream throttled most of the time. I move the throttle between 10-20KB/sec depending on how much my ratio needs it & how much stuff I'm the lone seeder for. Occasionally I'll run it unthrottled but rarely for more than half a day at a time.

reply to Anomalous
Re: rant.

Absolutely agree. It's amazing that back East they're saturated with unlimited broadband providers. Loads of people on here reporting 200GB+ and no problems. Here everybody except Primus appears to be limited. Heck, some of them seem to have limits like 3GB/month. Oh please! Just my email & http come to more than that! The idea of having a limit that low on a service that fast... you could use your monthly limit in a couple of hours. It's like giving someone a Ferrari and telling them to keep it under 30kph.

Agreed. I'd happily pay $50 for someone who said "sure you can have 100GB/month. And we don't mind if 30 of that's upstream". Maybe that's what I'm getting from Primus but I'd just like them to tell me so I can relax .

The business options don't appear much better. Sure, they charge you more, but the caps are seldom much better. Best ones I could see topped out around 30GB/month & you're expected to pay $100+ for that! Of course with that you also get web hosting, 10 static IPs and a dozen other things I don't want as well.

reply to Anomalous
I just spoke with someone from Technical Support (I just had a bizarre problem with my connection. I'm guessing it was something to do with Uniserve, because rebooting my monowall fixed it), and he swore up and down that email was spam.

I still strongly suspect someone at Uniserve has been bitching about how much Primus customers are utilizing their network (remember, they enforce a 10GB/mo cap on their own vict^H^H^H^Hcustomers), and someone at Primus responsible for the West decided to drop the axe without telling the call-center staff in the East.

I believe this email is far too sophisticated for simple spam. I'm not an expert, but I know a thing or three or four about mail headers, and DNS lookups, and WHOIS commands, and there's nothing in the headers of that email that make me suspect it was sent by anyone other than Primus.

I'll still call Customer Support in the morning, and get a name and a time. Others may want to do the same.

The tech said I would be called if they were going to pull the plug, but after the bureaucratic floundering I saw when trying to get service from this company, I wouldn't stake my life (or my internet access) on that.

I am also now very concerned about the potential for easy spamming of Primus account holders' email. I'm not going to go into much more detail, but if you got one of these emails, try sending an email from something like a hotmail account to the address in the "To:" field. You should be quite concerned at the result.