Reporting Tampering With Telus Infrastructure

[ACSial]

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 to.

[Nighthawk]

You can report that by going here: https://www.telus.com/en/bc/outages

1. Click on the green Report an outage button in the top right. 
2. Click on the option for Report an Outage on the right
3. Enter all relevant information and submit the form.

🙂

[ACSial]

This is far more serious. We were forced to discontinue out Telus Home Services account because of, among other things, scam calls placed through our number and swatting calls. Telus needs to install surveillance cameras on these boxes.

[Nighthawk]

I 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.

[ACSial]

No, someone has been accessing the box and using my line. The technicians mentioned a connector not properly replaced, which was causing my outages.

[ACSial]

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.

[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.

[ACSial]

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.

[TELUS_Support]

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.

[ACSial]

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.

[ACSial]

Again this is not spoofing. The calls stopped when the landline service was finally cancelled, and problems included long periods without service, and unexplained hum and busy signals on the line. Someone is definitely mucking about with your equipment, and putting security cameras on this and other infrastructure, and improving whatever locks they have would be useful.

[TELUS_Support]

We can forward this off to the area manager. What's the address/location of the box?

[ACSial]

This is an image of the cabinet, via Google Street View. It is just off of 4th St, next to an auto garage and a REIT, and across from the Safeway parking lot. I would suggest asking Safeway to allow you to put a security camera on their sign, looking South, which would cover this equipment.

[ACSial]

To reiterate: two of your technicians mentioned tampering, and the calls stopped when the service was cancelled, ergo this is NOT spoofing. I have now referred this matter to the district ISED Canada inspector.

[TELUS_Support]

Sounds good. We've alerted the area manager to look in to it just now. Appreciate the feedback!