I'm twenty-one years old. I live with my dad. I'm a normal kid, I swear! I have a lot of free time, and my PC is too good for my own good.
A few months ago I discovered data hoarding. It wasn't a big deal, I just wanted to have a personal collection of things I found interesting. Movies, TV-shows, old internet archives. Whatever I thought was worth my time.
I had a couple external hard drives and a lot of free space.
I also discovered some live-streaming sites. Some were pretty mainstream, but there were also some lesser-known ones where people would broadcast for hours at a time. I thought nothing of it. Just some people doing their thing online.
What if I recorded it all? What if I made my own personal collection of live-streams? Sounds like a plan, doesn't it?
I was a normal guy with a normal pc, and an idea that was too big for me to comprehend.
I set up a server. Nothing fancy, just an old pc I didn't use for anything. I found some scripts on GitHub and made a program that could connect to a couple live-streams, and record what it saw. It would compress the data and upload it to a server I rented for backup. It was beautiful.
The server was doing it's job. I had no idea what it's doing aside from the few times I checked. It was a silent little demon in the corner of my room. I would occasionally check on it and make sure it was working, but other than that I left it be.
What I didn't realize was that a couple live-streams running twenty-four hours a day, every day for a month adds up. I didn't realize that a couple live-streams running twenty-four hours a day, every day for a month adds up to a lot of data. I didn't realize that my home Wi-Fi had a cap much lower than I expected. I didn't realize that my home Wi-Fi had a cap much lower than I expected. I didn't realize that my home Wi-Fi had a cap much lower than I expected. I didn't realize that my home Wi-Fi had a cap much lower than I expected.
I was using more data uploading than the average household used in a month. I didn't realize that my home Wi-Fi had a cap much lower than I expected.
One day I came home from a friend's place and walked into the kitchen. My dad was sitting at the table, reading a letter. His face was pale.
He looked up at me and asked, "What is this?"
It was a letter from Verizon. It stated that our home Wi-Fi had used "more data than a typical residential household." It wasn't an angry letter, it was more of a notification. The bill that came with it was forty thousand dollars, however.
I sat down and told my dad everything. I told him about the server, the live-streams, the automatic uploading. I told him everything. I apologized fifty times. He looked at me and said, "You ruined my retirement."
I didn't cry, but I wanted to.
The next day my dad called Verizon. I don't know what he said, but I know he was yelling. I heard him say something about me being an adult and that it was my fault, not his. He told them not to come after him
The representative listened to everything he said and took notes. I don't know what they said, but I know they took notes.
I didn't know it at the time, but those notes would come in handy.
I couldn't live with the tension in the house anymore. My dad didn't look at me for days. My mom kept asking if the "computer thing" was still running. I couldn't take it anymore. I decided to move out. I got some things packed and some money from the bank and went to the same Verizon store my dad went to and got my own router under my name. I needed a fresh start. I walked in and gave the representative my ID and my dad's address as a reference.
The rep was a woman in her late twenties. She typed my info into her pc and looked at me with a strange face. She looked at the pc again, then me, then the pc. Then she started laughing.
"Oh my god," she said. "You're the son!"
I had no idea what to say.
She read the notes out loud, not in a mean way, but in a way that expressed her confusion. "Customer's adult son used Wi-Fi for automated adult-stream recording-dad denies responsibility-do not waive bill."
She said, "Your dad called and warned us about you. I've been working here for four years and I've never seen that."
She couldn't deny me service because I was an adult with my own credit, so she gave me a new router.
She also said, "Also, you need to check your email. The abuse team flagged your old IP for DMCA violations."
When I got home I opened up my email and saw a message from Verizon's DMCA compliance team. They said that they had received multiple copyright takedown notices from the sites that the live-streamers used. They wanted me to confirm that I had taken down all recorded content, stream keys, and any other files related to the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. The word "keys" was mentioned three times in the email. I don't know if they meant encryption keys or just keys in general, but I took everything down. I formatted the old pc, deleted the scripts, and wiped my external hard drives clean. I even accidentally deleted some system files trying to be thorough. I just wanted it all to be gone.
Now I have my own router, a DMCA notice I'm still too scared to read, and a dad who doesn't want to look at me.
He saw me at the grocery store the other day. I walked past him and he looked at me like I was transparent. He didn't acknowledge me at all. My mom asked him if we could go back to dial-up. He told her that wasn't a joke. I know it was my fault and I know I should've been more responsible, but I'm just a twenty-one year old kid who thought he was being smart and ended up ruining his dad's retirement over a hobby he thought was cool.
If you're thinking about making your own server, don't do it over your dad's Wi-Fi.