Home Phone Line Fraud - Not Possible??

wantmemoney

lady_lurkalot wrote:

and confirming that the £1,600 will be removed from her account

I hope you mean 'will not be removed'..which would be fantastic news. well done.

also did you understand my previous post.

TalkTalk(Opal) is the company that supplies the premium rate lines to Square1. That means they were sharing the revenue with Square1.

Also their agreement with Square1 (in Annex E) would contain a 'claw back' clause. TalkTalk could have (and should have) refused to pass the revenue on at the slightest suspicion of fraud/AIT(Artificial Inflated Traffic).

Some Networks do in cases like this but keep the revenue for themselves unless the 'customer' is persistent enough in demanding they are not liable for these fraudulent bills.

Are you now allowed to confirm the Network and numbers?

Buzby

I do not think there was any doubt that fraud on a home telephone line has always been possible, the difficulty it is the customer who has to do all the running.

What would be of interest is any information they may have passed on as to where the fraud took place, at the flat, external to it or simply a billing issue anomaly.

Finally, this they provide any assurances that the same line could not be targeted in the same way?

Colin_London

The circumstances of the OPs Mum living in Sheltered Accommodation could indicate the possibility that the line was not being tampered with outside ('up a pole' as has been amusingly suggested, or in a roadside cabinet), but rather from within the accommodation itself.

If the BT lines all come in to a comms or IT cupboard in the building and, for example, are jumpered onto the buildings own internal wiring there, then there may be a Krone block or similar which could easily have an engineers phone attached, from which a devious employee (night watchman or the like) could make these phone calls in the middle of the night.

I did actually see evidence of someone breaking into a BT cabinet on the roadside once - must be about 15 years ago in SE London early one Sunday morning. The doors had been crowbarred open and damaged, and there was jumper wire left lying in the street. Of course I reported what I had seen to BT.

Buzby

Irrespective of how the line was intercepted, Pole, Distribution Point, or indeed a paired DECT handset, the end user will always be held liable unless there is proof positive of external interference.

The best I'd heard was a care home using a PABX, residents lines were passed through directly to their own hunt group, but the administration lines were incorrectly configured, so that outgoing calls made by them could take any of the resident;s lines due to a configuration error. That's why I'm interested into how it was proved the problem was confirmed.

wantmemoney

Buzby wrote:

the end user will always be held liable

yes but 'held liable' by who

birdwatcher1234

My brother has his landline phone with Talk Talk and his bill is usually around £38 a month. On March 22nd his phone was cut off (along with his internet connection) the only number he could call was Talk Talk, who told him his service was disconnected due to a £700+ usage that they wanted paying immediately (he pays by DD and hadn't actually received this bill yet).
On viewing this bill online, my brother discovered that since 12th March he had supposedly called the speaking clock (on 123) every few seconds all through most nights during this period (totalling over 500 times, at 50p a call). There were also a lot of international calls, for example, calls to:
Latvia
Solomon Islands
Afghanistan
Sri Lanka
I called these international numbers and every single one was a bank.
There were also a lot of calls to 118118.

Needless to say my brother had not made any of these calls (no one has access to his phone or house) and most were made during the early hours of the morning.

We have reported it to the police and to the ombudsman, spoken to Talk Talk's fraud department who are investigating, and also to 118118, who are also investigating.

This can't be the first time this has ever happened to anyone, so I would be grateful if anyone who has heard of this before to let me know.

By the way, the phone is not connected to any equipment other than the landline handset and a router for the internet.

lady_lurkalot

Hi Birdwatcher

This is almost exactly the same as what happened to my mum, except all the calls made from her line were to 'adult' chat lines.
And guess what, yes.... her phone provider is also TalkTalk. Make sure your brother cancels his direct debit. Good luck in your efforts to prove that your brother has not made these calls .... it seems it is certainly a case of 'guilty until proven innocent' in these cases and the whole situation has been extremely worrying and stressful for my mum. In her case, a BT engineer found that her external line had been tampered with at the telegraph pole opposite her flat (yes it can be done apparently - apologies to the person who suggested this earlier and was not taken too seriously I think).

dt3887

so it was someone up a pole with a handset in one hand.....and something else in the other? people do some strange things to keep warm in the night...

glad you and your mum got it all sorted though.
There seems to be a lot of people all using talk talk who are having similar problems...?

birdwatcher1234

Hi Lady lurkalot

Thanks for your reply. Oh I feel so sorry for you and your mum, I know my brother is totally stressed out by all this, it's so worrying. Yes, I got him to cancel his DD straight away, thanks for that.
But it's great you got your mum sorted - well done for keeping at it, I know it's hard work.

And thanks, dt3887 for your response. Someone up a pole seems so far fetched, but apparently not!

Equally strange is the fact that last night my brother discovered his phone was working again. I got him to call my mobile and an international number, which he did, successfully. I emailed Talktalk's fraud department to let them know and they called me this morning - he confirmed that according to their equipment the line is still disconnected (and barred from international calls)! I checked my brother's account this morning and low and behold, the calls to 123 have started again.
So at least they know for sure now that something somewhere is terribly wrong.
Thanks again, I'll keep you all updated.

dt3887

yw birdwatcher. it is quite a disturbing image, and i dont want to look out my bedroom window in the night anyway incase i see someone "busy"....

hope you get your stuff sorted aswell