Vodafone should be ashamed of themselves

[blythburgh]

Vodafone will not help her and is refusing to change the factory setting password so she can change it to one that only she knows.

The police are aware and he is currently on bail so is breaking his bail by getting so close to the house.

People who have escaped an abusive relationship should be able to have factory setting passwords on modems and phones changed. Vodafone are refusing to do this.

[Chadwick]

Several times she has lost her internet connection. [...] he is repeatedly going close to her home and getting the internet connection reset to factory settings which means he can reset the password.

How does she restore her internet connection each time?

[blythburgh]

Several times she has lost her internet connection. [...] he is repeatedly going close to her home and getting the internet connection reset to factory settings which means he can reset the password.

How does she restore her internet connection each time?

They took photos of the factory password and stored it on their phones "just in case they ever needed it". So she can reset everything to factory settings and change the password, not the factory settings password but to one only she knows. And he will break bail conditions and get close to the house and put everything back to factory settings and change the password to one only he knows. That is why she needs Vodafone to change the original password that you go back to if you reset modem, phone etc to factory settings

[Sarah]

The story still doesn't make much sense unless he has physical access to the router. If she's not locked out of the admin features then she should be able to change all the necessary passwords and settings to stop what he's doing. Has she offered to pay Vodafone their costs to carry out the request? I can only guess they're "refusing" to do these changes without charge, since sending an engineer out to change passwords for a customer probably isn't something a supplier would usually be obliged to do. She presumably could, alternatively, hire an independent IT support person to sort it out, if she doesn't have friends that can help.

[macliam]

The simplest thing would be to change the router. Switch it on and off a few times over the next few days and then tell Vodafone it's not working properly......

[Chadwick]

They took photos of the factory password and stored it on their phones "just in case they ever needed it". So she can reset everything to factory settings and change the password, not the factory settings password but to one only she knows. And he will break bail conditions and get close to the house and put everything back to factory settings and change the password to one only he knows. That is why she needs Vodafone to change the original password that you go back to if you reset modem, phone etc to factory settings

Which password is being changed?

A modem/router generally has two passwords.
One is for other devices to connect to the router. Commonly referred to as the 'wireless password/key'. This is the one you enter into your phone so that it can connect to the wifi. The one you ask for in a pub or cafe.
The other is the admin password. This is used to log into the admin's control panel, where you can change settings on the router, including the wifi password.

It sounds like the man is logging in as an admin, resetting the router and then changing the wifi password.

To resolve that, she could log in as admin and do the following:

1. Check if he has created another admin user account for himself; if so, delete it. She only needs one admin user account.
2. Change the password on the admin account.
3. Change the SSID. This is the name of the wifi network that you see on your phone when you're searching for a wifi connection. If she changes this, he won't see the network he's looking for. You will probably need to set up the wifi connection on your other devices again because they will also not find the network under its new name.
4. Hide the SSID. This means it won't show up in the list when you're searching for a wifi network. Your phones etc will still connect to it if they've got the correct network name, but it will be invisible to anyone new. In this particular situation, this will only be effective if she's changed the SSID first, because the man's device knows the current name of the network, so will still find it even though it's not showing as visible.

Or she could get a new router, which would effectively do the first three items on the list above.

[macliam]

....Or she could get a new router, which would effectively do the first three items on the list above.

Yep!