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Articles for Category Tag - Crime

Doorstep Scammers Posing as Council Reps to Sell UK Broadband

18th August, 2023 (8 Comments)

Residents in the West Midland’s city of Wolverhampton have been warned by the local city council to be on the lookout for doorstep scammers, some of which have recently been posing as council employees in an attempt to entice people to switch their ISP for free broadband.

Mobile giant Vodafone UK and Sky (Comcast) have reportedly two among several "groups" that have approached budget conscious fixed broadband ISP TalkTalk about a potential deal (most likely an acquisition), which in theory could create a much larger provider with more influence over the industry. Just to recap. In 2020 TalkTalk became the subject of a £1.1bn takeover by Toscafund - controlled by hedge fund tycoon Martin Hughes (here), which including debt valued the broadband provider at around £1.8bn. The deal took the ISP private and gave them more financial flexibility for their future plans. Since then, they've backed Freedom Fibre (here) and this week made the notable acquisition of Ethernet provider Virtual1 (here). According to the FT (paywall) and Sky News, TalkTalk is now said to have asked investment bank Lazard to review its options after allegedly being approach by several groups, including Vodafone and Sky (Sky Broadband). Lazard is a logical choice as they recently acted as Financial Advisor to TalkTalk on the Virtual1 transaction. Some industry analysts have reportedly suggested that TalkTalk itself could now be worth "at least" £3bn. But this seems rather optimistic for an ISP that doesn't have any significant fixed line broadband infrastructure to call its own (excluding their old unbundled LLU network) and largely just piggybacks off Openreach (BT), CityFibre and Freedom Fibre. But TalkTalk do have a strong business and wholesale side. Funnily enough, Sky Broadband are in a similar position with their own fixed line base, while Vodafone also likes to piggyback off Openreach and CityFibre. At present, Vodafone has a fixed broadband base of 991,000 customers, while Sky Broadband is estimated to be home to around 6.7 million and TalkTalk has approximately 4.2 million. Suffice to say, anybody gobbling up TalkTalk would instantly become a much larger provider, giving them a greater say in how the UK broadband market develops and more opportunities for convergence (Vodafone with mobile, and Sky with mobile and TV). Crucially, TalkTalk's consumer base is mostly made up of those on older copper and hybrid fibre lines (i.e. ADSL and FTTC / VDSL2), which are ripe for a future migration to FTTP. At the time of writing, all of the aforementioned operators have decline to comment on the reports, and TalkTalk has yet to receive any serious formal offers. In other words, we strongly suspect that this is largely just an exercise in spin to help TalkTalk drum up some more productive interest in the idea. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to suspect that they might succeed, as the interest seems genuine. On the other hand, we see reports like this every year or so and only a very few ever convert into a serious offer. Time will tell. Much may depend upon whether or not TalkTalk’s new owners are more flexible and pragmatic about doing a deal than the previous lot. Arguably, TalkTalk might have gone much further by now had they taken some different decisions a few years ago (e.g. co-investing in FTTP instead of Pay TV).

Complaints Prompt UK ISP TalkTalk to Suspend Doorstep Sellers in Newcastle

17th August, 2023 (4 Comments)

Budget focused broadband ISP TalkTalk has “suspended all door-to-door sales activity” in the Newcastle area after residents complained about cold calling occurring in parts of the city designated as a No Cold Calling Zone (NCCZ), which should be fairly self-explanatory to everybody, if not so much the sellers themselves, apparently.

Cable Thieves Leave Oxfordshire UK Village Offline for Nearly 2 Weeks

14th August, 2023 (23 Comments)

Some 400 homes across the rural Oxfordshire (England) village of Ardington have been left disconnected from their broadband and phone services for almost two weeks, which occurred after criminals stole more than 500 metres of underground copper cable from Openreach’s local network.

Error message concept. Alert, attention notification. Important reminder

Hiya – UK Remains the Worst Place in Europe for Call Fraud

10th August, 2023 (14 Comments)

The latest Q2 2023 data from caller ID verification firm Hiya, which among other things also works with UK broadband ISP BT (EE) to help detect and block SPAM and fraud calls, has revealed that 27.3% of UK calls from non-contacts are spam (79.3 million) and, of that figure, 18% were classified as “nuisance calls” and 9.3% were “fraud calls“.

Legal Opinion Warns of “unlawful” Clause in UK Online Safety Bill

19th July, 2023 (12 Comments)

The UK Government’s controversial new Online Safety Bill is facing more criticism today after Dan Squires KC and Emma Foubister of Matrix Chambers issued a legal opinion on its “prior restraint” clause. This suggests that there is “likely to be significant interference with freedom of expression that is unforeseeable and which is thus not prescribed by law“.

BT Reveal Cause of 999 Emergency UK Call Handling Outage

30th June, 2023 (25 Comments)

Broadband and telecoms giant BT has revealed that last Sunday’s outage and disruption to their 999 emergency services number, which resulted in 11,470 unique emergency calls being “unsuccessfully connected“, was caused by a “complex software issue” that had never previously been seen through their testing regime.

Cable Thieves Continue to Attack Openreach’s Cambridgeshire Network

28th June, 2023 (21 Comments)

The Cambridgeshire Constabulary has appealed for information after they revealed that Openreach’s UK broadband and phone network in the county had been attacked eight times since May 2023 by criminal gangs, which typically target the theft of underground copper cables and often cause significant service outages.

Openreach Offer £20k Reward to Catch Thamesmead Cable Thieves

5th June, 2023 (12 Comments)

Openreach (BT) and Crimestoppers have begun offering a reward of £20,000 to help catch the criminals who were responsible for several thefts of their copper broadband and phone cables around the Thamesmead area of South-East London, which caused significant service disruption for locals.

ICO Fines UK ISP Ice Comms £80k for Making Illegal SPAM Calls

16th May, 2023 (8 Comments)

Crewe-based broadband and phone provider Ice Telecommunications Ltd (Ice Comms) has been fined £80,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after they were found to have made 72,682 unsolicited marketing (SPAM) calls to businesses registered with the CTPS or TPS between 13th Sept 2021 and 31st Jan 2022.

Ofcom UK Test New Way to Detect and Block Spoofed Numbers

28th April, 2023 (13 Comments)

Ofcom has today begun seeking feedback from the industry on the potential future adoption of Calling Line Identification (CLI) authentication, which – once the UK has fully transitioned to digital landlines – could be adopted as a new approach to detecting and blocking “spoofed” (fake) phone numbers.

Internet Danger Websites with Scam Ads and Malware

Top 5 Most Common Fraud Texts on Virgin Media O2’s UK Network

21st April, 2023 (11 Comments)

Mobile operator O2 (VMO2) has, after analysing and blocking tens of millions of malicious and fraudulent text (SMS) messages targeting its UK customers, revealed the top five most common fraud texts blocked on their network (firewall) in March 2023. Topping the table were texts from criminals posing as someone’s mum or dad.

High Court Blocks Crowdfunded Legal Challenge to UK 5G Rollout

13th March, 2023 (0 Comments)

The High Court (King’s Bench Divison) has once again blocked a questionable crowd-funded legal challenge by the Action Against 5G campaign, which had been attempting to disrupt the UK rollout of 5G (mobile broadband) over fears that the government was being “unlawful” in “failing to protect the public from the health risks from 5G.“

Steeper UK Fines for Nuisance Calls and Texts Inch Closer

8th March, 2023 (4 Comments)

The UK Government’s Technology Secretary, Michelle Donelan MP, will today re-introduce the new Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDI No.2) to parliament, which among other things will increase fines for nuisance calls and texts to be either up to 4% of global turnover or £17.5 million, whichever is greater.

Hiya Claims UK is the Worst Place in Europe for Phone Fraud

23rd February, 2023 (5 Comments)

New data from caller ID verification firm Hiya, which also works with UK broadband ISP BT (EE) to help detect and block SPAM and fraud calls, has today claimed that 28% of non-contact calls in the United Kingdom were identified as spam in 2022. Plus, the UK also comes out as the worst in Europe for “phone fraud“.

BT Suspend Doorstep Selling on Isle of Wight After Serious Complaint

7th February, 2023 (27 Comments)

BT (EE) has suspended doorstep selling on the Isle of Wight, which was being conducted on their behalf by a third-party firm ‘Money Expert‘, after rival broadband ISP WightFibre complained that the sellers had allegedly been making some very dishonest claims about the operator.

Vandals Cause £13k of Damage to Broadband Network in Shropshire Village

23rd January, 2023 (11 Comments)

The West Mercia police force in Shropshire (England) are appealing for information after repeated attacks by criminals, which have occurred over the last four weeks, caused an estimated £13,000 worth of damage to broadband infrastructure belonging, we think, to Openreach in the village of Selattyn (near Oswestry).

UK Gov Says Password Sharing on Streaming Services is Illegal UPDATE2

20th December, 2022 (63 Comments)

The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) announced an interesting new campaign in partnership with Meta yesterday, which among other things decided to label “password sharing on streaming services [e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime etc.] … without paying a subscription” as breaking copyright law. That’s a lot of new criminals.