I've been living in my apartment for the last three months without issues until about two weeks ago when my internet suddenly stopped working—both wireless and through Ethernet on my PC. After contacting customer service, they informed me that they had blocked my PC from accessing the internet due to suspected BitTorrent usage. However, it's been five years since I've used BitTorrent, and I even ran a malware scan with Malwarebytes that didn't show any issues. Each time I call, they temporarily unblock it, but it gets blocked again shortly after. I've tried all their suggestions and I'm stuck on what to do next, except maybe wiping my data. Another thing to note is that my PC recently updated to the latest Windows 11 version after I enabled TPM, which might coincide with when these issues started. Any ideas on what might be causing this and how I can fix it?
3 Answers
It sounds like your ISP might be misidentifying some of your network traffic as torrenting. This can happen if you have software that uses peer-to-peer technology for updates, like certain games or even Windows itself. A good first step is to check your PC’s Delivery Optimization settings. You can find it under Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options. Make sure 'Allow downloads from other PCs' is turned off and see if that makes a difference.
Just a heads up, many games utilize P2P distribution methods similar to torrenting for downloading updates. Games like War Thunder or World of Tanks could be falsely triggering BitTorrent detections. If you have any of these installed, that might explain the issue.
I checked a few lists, and I don't think I have any games that use P2P. So that might not be it.
If you’re worried about malware, I recommend checking out a good malware removal guide. Sometimes malicious software can operate in the background and cause these kinds of connectivity problems. Better to be safe and double-check your system.
I just turned that off. I’ll keep an eye on it and see how it goes!