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3 Messages
Landline hacked, getting no help!
I can see that this issue has been covered in the archives but they are all locked and I cannot see the responses. My phone line has been hacked, and I’m not talking about spoofing. One day back in March, an 855 number called my landline. Every day since that, at exactly 6 am, there is an outgoing call to that same number from my landline that I am not placing. I can see my line become “in use” and when I push the talk button I can hear the phone dialing but I am not doing this. I tried online help, they told me to call the phone manufacturer, that it must be something wrong with the phone. I unplugged the phone and it continued to happen, I can see it in my call history online. I then called in for live support and they also had no idea how to help me. I asked for the issue to be escalated to next level support to no avail. I asked for a new phone number. It was not properly provisioned so was not working for a period of time. Once Comcast got the new number working, the line is once again calling that same number every morning at 6 am, even though I don’t have a physical phone connected to the line. My public hotspot is off. I’ve changed the gateway password and it’s still happening. Anyone have any idea how to resolve this?
bald271
Contributor
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179 Messages
4 years ago
Symptoms are consistent with one of your devices (most likely a windows computer) being infected with an automated virus created by a 12-year-old hacker 14 years ago, now being leveraged as a scam-as-a-service offering by multiple vendors.
If there an oldschool phone-modem or fax-modem on your computer connected to your house copper phone wiring, please disconnect that wire!
Here are two more approaches to help you see how to diagnose/fix: 1. You can power-off/disconnect all computers and reconnnect each one daily and you will see which is somehow doing the unwanted dialing. 2. Malwarebytes is legit will likely identify the infected device : consider running it to remove malware - then uninstall malwarebytes afterwards.
Please also note that appears to be zero point zero (0.0) evidence that anything from xfinity was hacked or is hackable whatsoever - that is not how they roll.
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cpamom
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3 Messages
4 years ago
For the benefit of anyone who may be following this: I have spent 4 days intermittently with Comcast on Twitter trying to get this resolved (they are VERY slow to respond but they eventually do.) This morning I ran my own experiment. Since the unattended outgoing call is made at 6 am every morning, at 5:30 am I removed all devices from the gateway - all TVs and printers were unplugged from the wall, and phones (iOS, not Android) and computers (which have had Malwarebytes or Norton running since they were purchased) were powered down except one, thereby disconnecting them from the gateway (a COMCAST gateway). I confirmed online that no devices were connected to the gateway except the one computer, then powered down that last computer that I used to check. I plugged my physical phone back into the phone line so I could monitor activity. At 6 am, the line went to "in use" and dialed the same number. At 6:02, I received a text (now that I have Advanced Security enabled) that an unknown device was connected to my gateway. I immediately paused that device and restarted my modem, at which time the unknown device was booted and has not reconnected. This tells me that the unknown devices (there are several that I can see in my history now that I have Advanced Security enabled) do not know the password to my gateway (which I change often), but are getting into my gateway using the landline as a back door. PLEASE check your phone history and PLEASE enable Advanced Security so this doesn't happen to you. 12 hours later and after being re-routed through several channels at Comcast, still no answer. PLEASE do not be comfortable with a false sense of security that Comcast has your back - be diligent and make sure you are doing everything you can to keep your home safe.
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