For all those people querying telephone account call costs with BT … take note of the following case which throws open the security on BT lines, writes Jim Gannon.
Peter Creese, of Countesthorpe, Leicester appeared at Leicester Crown Court on Friday, March 19 on 15 (sample) charges under the Telecommunications Act such as dishonestly obtaining electronic communication services with intent to avoid payment. He had admitted the offences earlier. He was given 180 hours of community service and ordered to pay £960 in compensation. All very inconspicious on the face of it but the reality is quite different.
Background
Back in 2008 I received a BT bill which showed a telephone call to a premium rate number and a mobile number which I did not recognise amounting to £51.30. I queried this and was told it was definately made from my house with my telephone equipment. Obviously I queried this but BT remained adamant that the call was made from my address. This was followed up with line investigation and numerous other calls to BT, but my concerns fell on deaf ears even though I had been a BT customer for some 30 years. Not letting this rest I decided to make some of my own investigations only to discover that the call in question was made to a late night sex chat line. This eliminated any chance that there may have been a mistake on my part and I was convinced that all was not well with BT’s billing and line security systems. Letters to BT went unacknowledged and because I failed to pay the bill which was in dispute I was duly cut off. Outstanding customer service from BT I think not. After a frustrating few months and a bill settled in order to get reconnected, I learned that someone else in my small village had experienced a similar problem. This led to a circular among villagers and low and behold 13 actually came forward, all complaining of premium rate calls on their bills which they maintained had not been made. Individuals had contacted BT only to be given the same response I had received, and were faced with settling the bills or being cut off. I had specifically asked if they had received any other complaints of a similar nature and they stated they had not, so we decided to put on a united front to get the matter investigated. Some of the sums involved were in excess of £100.
Police involvement
As these calls were obviously not being made by us we referred the matter to our local beat officer PC Henry Henderson who informed us that it was a matter for BT investigations, as they had all the equipment to carry out a successful investigation. He agreed to approach BT on our behalf after we presented a detailed schedule of calls made and numbers involved, all of which were calls made to adult chat lines on premium rate numbers. We convened a meeting at which a BT investigator attended and we presented our evidence. While the standard BT approach appears to be that their lines are totally secure and it is normally the line user’s responsibility, she could see there was a problem which BT needed to follow up with an investigation.
Reality
The only likely scenario was that someone must have been randomly tapping into customers telephone lines, in the middle of nowhere, in all weathers, late at night spending hours talking about sex. Hardly likely one would think. The fact was however if 13 villagers were not responsible for making these calls, who was, and how were they achieving it ?
What next
Out of the blue, following a few weeks of silence from BT, one of our villagers returning home from a night out happened to notice a van late at night parked next to a BT junction box in the next village. What is strange about this you may ask? Well, it happened to be a Eon service van, not normally associated with BT exchange boxes. A quick note of the registration number and a call to the police coupled with investigations by BT led to an important lead. An ex-BT engineer who was working for Eon and was identified as the regular user of the van sighted was now in the frame, and the mystery started to unfold. Not only were our phones being tapped but the next village to ours were also experiencing a similar problem. After setting cameras on the exchange box in question Creese was duly apprehended and interviewed and later charged.
So are lines secure
Given the fact that numerous households were notifying BT of calls they had not made, you would have expected BT to have put two and two together but no, they just kept on insisting that calls were being made from the account addresses and the bills incurred had to be paid. Are BT lines secure in remote locations? Obviously not because if one has the knowledge it only takes a simple connection with the right equipment, and the determination to tap the lines
The fact that Creese was dismissed from BT for similar activities and then went onto get employment at Eon raises concerns in itself but the fact is that this has probably happened elsewhere. Where communication between neighbours is not so regular and people would not wish to disclose the nature of the calls being made it probably has gone unreported although I suspect that BT is well aware of the shortfall in their line security and for reasons best known to them wish not to publicise it
Warning signs
Elderly ladies living alone, people away on holiday, senior citizens: late night calls and no previous history of premium numbers being used and numerous complaints from one village failed to jolt BT into action when all these issues should have prompted some investigation. The fact that BT security could be breached with relative ease is a major concern but maybe this case will cause them to review their security of exchange boxes in remote locations in the near future..
Reprecussions
The ease with which this line tapping was carried out over a period of 12 months undetected just demonstrates how many possibilities there are to break into domestic and business user lines, making the James Bond antics more of a reality than many people think. Many commercial companies are aware of their own vulnerability and rely on their own security advisors to give them the protection they need as I did when Head of Security Operations for The Unipart Group.
However those companies out there who have not, should take stock of their own line security, as they cannot rely on telephone line service providers to do it for them.
