This topic

Possible hacking

sarn53 — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 14:01:21 GMT

Last night I had a visit from two community police officers, they said that the control room had received a phone call from a man saying that he was in pain, when they searched the number it came back to my address, I checked my phone and it showed no outgoing calls, is it possible that my line has been hacked or were these two individuals not who they say they were, I checked my usage this morning but it showed nothing, as I very rarely use my landline. Is it possible that someone can use my landline without my knowledge.

Re: Possible hacking

Keith_Beddoe — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 14:16:53 GMT

@sarn53

Welcome to this user forum for BT Retail phone and broadband customers.

Dial 17070 from your landline and check that the number read back matches your home phone number.

The police cannot look up your address from your phone number, this has to be done via the 999 call handling process, which means there must have been a 999 call. Its unlikely a PCO would be asked to deal, it would be a health care professional.

Re: Possible hacking

sarn53 — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 14:24:02 GMT

Thank you for the information, it comes back as my number, so I assume that my line hasn't been hacked.

Re: Possible hacking

iniltous — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 16:11:47 GMT

Sounds very dodgy , if someone calls 999 and asks for help ( or even if it’s a silent call or they ask for something odd , like ordering a pizza hoping the operator realises the call is an emergency but the caller doesn’t want to alert another person to the fact that they have called 999 ) then the call is held and traced and the police ( having got the address from the Telco ) attend the property, the call is held until the police ask ‘BT’ to remove the ‘hold’ from the the line , as they have established the ‘line’ that made the call or decided it doesn’t need holding .

If this supposed call was to a control room what was the control room , presumably it wasn’t the ‘BT’ 999 operator , who ‘holds’ the call , stopping any other calls being made from that line , and then puts a call through to the appropriate emergency service , police , ambulance, fire , and connected them to the line that made the 999 call and stays on the line .

If this call was directly to a ‘police’ control room (an ordinary phone number not 999 ) , all the police could do is try ‘1471’ which reads out the last number the line received a call from , provided the caller didn’t use ‘number withheld ‘ , and even with a phone number they wouldn’t have the wherewithal to do a reverse number search to get an address from it , and with literally dozens of service providers , calling ‘BT’ to ask ‘is this one of your numbers and what address is it linked to ‘ wouldn’t work if the number wasn’t even a BT customer and BT only have around 25% of the market , so a 75% chance BT don’t even provide the ‘line’

Re: Possible hacking

gg30340 — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 18:25:45 GMT

Phone your local Police Office and ask if they had sent any officers to your address!