When a “landline” isn’t a landline

In 1972, New York Telephone called to advise me that it was adding calls to my bill that had been made by someone in the house who had tried to bill them to a fake number. You could do this then: give the operator a third number for billing. The guilty short-term housemate got mad: why hadn’t I refused the charges? Really, he’d been stupid: if you’re going to do that sort of thing, you do it from a phone booth, not from your house. Phone fraud, like so many other things, is different now. A week or two back, the support people at my ISP, a small networking company, emailed: it seemed like my IP phone box had been hacked, because it had made £322 worth of calls on Sunday morning, and could I scan all my devices for malware, then change all passwords, and confirm when I’d done it? Sunday. I spent all Sunday fretting because my broadband was down. Unless it was briefly up without my knowing it, how could anyone exploit my network to make calls, even if they had laid the groundwork at an…

Commenting on Bubbles has been removed. Why? If you want to talk about this post, write to the author, use the comments on their blog if it has them, or reply with a "RE:" post on your own blog. Suggestions? feedback@bubbles.town