Forum Discussion
Reporting Tampering With Telus Infrastructure
There have been ongoing issues with tampering with Telus equipment (the neighbourhood network box) that have forced us to cancel our Telus Home Services account. Please advise on who to report this t...
Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power UserI think you may be misunderstanding what the boxes in your neighbourhood do and how phone technology works. The physical boxes are just distribution points for the physical cables that run to each residence. Someone spoofing your phone number on call display and swatting calls have nothing to do with the Telus box in the neighbourhood, nor Telus. Both problems can occur regardless of the service provider or the country and the person or people behind them don't even have to be local or even in the country. Both also can affect landlines and cellular.
Caller ID spoofing is a common problem globally and there is no fix for it unless the technology behind it radically changes and I can't see the global telecom industry doing that anytime soon. Swatting usually means that you, or someone in the household, has pissed off someone with a lot of free time on their hands and if you were swatted, the cops should be looking into that.
I looked it up, and the technique is called"beige boxing"—someone physically attaches a handset to the line in the cabinet. All the calls, including 911 hangups, originated from my line, outside of my property. And a local business had a prolonged phone outage from the same issue. Telus needs to secure these units.
TELUS_SupportOfficial Support Team
What Nighthawk says is correct. We'll still however send you a private message to discuss this further and see if we can assist in any way.
Just put video surveillance or some other security on these network cabinets. They are definitely being accessed by malicious parties. This is the unit that has been tampered with in my neighbourhood:
- TELUS_Support
We have no reports of any other issues in that area, and our network team would be aware of any tampering or unauthorized access. There's a much more likely chance that your number was spoofed. You can always configure your device's settings (to restrict all outgoing calls from your specific number to just your contacts, for example). You can also report possible call spoofing to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at their website or by calling 1-888-495-8501.
- Nighthawk
You're making assumptions as to what happened. It's a near zero chance that someone is physically connecting a handset at the local box just to make 911 calls, etc. There is an extremely high chance that someone spoofed your number and made the calls from another location or out of the country. On rare occasions, 911 calls have also been triggered by some cordless phones low on battery in the past.
There was no cordless handset on the line. Two Telus technicians mentioned tampering with the connectors in the cabinet. The 911 calls were hangup calls that were placed even when (on the advice of the Telus call centre) the phone was removed from the jack. All these calls stopped when we cut off our service. These calls were definitely being placed from the Telus lines.
