Paranoia and Idiocy

I had a really strange experience over the last couple of days, and I feel compelled to rant about it. There is intrigue, confusion, and murder. OK, well not murder, though that probably would have made the story more compelling. Basically when I got home last Friday night, I saw a cable line run from the post on my front yard (which is on the left property line), across my yard, up my driveway and was connected to the cable drop on the side of my house.

I went in and asked the boss what the deal was. She said some folks from Comcast (my local cable company) came by and ran the wire. When she asked them what they were doing, they claimed to have an order to run a line into our house. She figured I was up to something. But for the first time in a while, I wasn't.

This was very strange. I didn't request any such thing. I have DirecTV. But then my "security mindset" went into overdrive. Why would the cable company just randomly run a line to my house? Was there some kind of new device that could hack a network through the cable wiring, even if you don't use a cable modem? Seriously. This is what was going through my mind. My paranoia was kicking in, big time. I couldn't be sure and i wasn't taking any chances. I unplugged the cable, neatly wrapped up the 100' of wire around the post and went about my business. I foiled the hackers, YEAH!

Until this morning that is. I was squirreled away in my office writing today's Daily Incite and my wife came running down telling me some guys were outside marking up my yard. I proceeded to go outside and chatted with the nice Southern boys that were marking the utility lines. Gracious, these southerners are. Basically they explained their responsibility to mark the utility lines if they get an order to do any digging. I told them it must be some kind of mistake, but they went about their business anyway.

But that's wasn't all. As the guys were marking up the yard, a truck with a trench digger pulls up. I flagged them down and told them there were in the wrong place, especially since they planned to rip up my yard. They showed me the work order, which was for my address, but had someone else's name. I was very confused, but the workers graciously took off. Which was good because there were three of them and they had a trench digger. I'm pretty tough, but I think my chances against a trench digger aren't very good.

Even worse, if I wasn't home I'd be the proud owner of a cable line run to my house that i didn't need and a torn up yard, just in time for winter when it would take months to grow over.

The utility line guys were kind enough to point me to the wiring contractor that put in the order, so I called them and left a pretty nasty message to call off the dogs. Then I called Comcast. Amazingly enough, the sales person was helpful and told me there was an order just to run a drop into my house. No cable order behind that. No order for Internet service. Just to run the line into my house. Why would they do that without an order for service? Even more confusing is that I already have a line to my house since the previous owners used Comcast.

The sales person pointed me to the "problem service" group who could help me. So I called them up. The service rep was also very helpful, and ultimately canceled the order after being as confused as I was.

But I wasn't done. I still couldn't get it out of my head as to how and why that order was placed. Again, my paranoia was getting the best of me. I figured maybe it was an address screw-up, so I looked up the guy's name on the order form and found his listed number. He lives in another part of Alpharetta. But the number put on the order corresponded to his number. So I called his house. His wife was very gracious, but had no idea what I was talking about. So that was a dead end.

So I did some more digging. It turns out the name of the guy on the order was actually the FIRST owner of my house. I'm the third owner. Man that is strange.

So after putting the pieces together, this seems to be some kind of fraud. To what end I'm not sure, but that's what it seems to be. Here's how it must have gone down.

1. Fraudster finds my address, somehow knows I'm not a Comcast customer and looks up the first owner in the public records.
2. Takes the first owner's name and finds someone in the same area with the same name.
3. With the name and legit phone number, calls up Comcast and requests a line run to the house.
4. Comcast puts the wheels in motion, and if I wasn't home to stop the workers, all hell would have broken loose.

Yeah, seems far fetched to me also, but I can't think of any other explanations.

Who benefits if a bogus order is placed and actually completed? The wiring contractor? Actually they do, so this is the most likely scenario. So I questioned them (the utility guys gave me the number). It seems this kind of thing happens fairly frequently. Evidently Comcast has to foot the bill to patch up the yard and the contractor gets paid, whether the service was ordered or not. The only hole in the theory is how does the contractor gets assigned the work order? Unless they can guarantee the order gets sent to them, the scheme doesn't hold water. Maybe they have someone on the inside routing the "bogus" orders to them. That's a possibility.

Was someone trying to annoy me? Maybe. But that seems pretty unlikely though I am a pretty annoying type of guy. Was someone trying to poke at Comcast? Once again, maybe. But what is the payoff besides costing Comcast money?

The real problem is that Comcast does absolutely no verification before they enter in a work order and rip up someone's yard. Seriously, NO VERIFICATION. In two seconds they could have figured out that the name on the work order was not the owner of the house. They could have called the number on the work order, just to verify and "schedule" the visit. There are lots of things they could have done including check and see that I already had a line running to my house, but they do none of that. That's the idiocy.

Comcast got lucky that I was home and was paranoid enough to ask questions. I probably saved them a couple thousand bucks when all was said and done. Though I could use a new sod job in my yard.

I guess the moral of the story is there is fraud everywhere, not just in our little cyber-world. But it's fraud just the same.