This morning as I was working, I noticed a regular hatchback with out of state plates slowly driving with it’s hazards on pull up to my neighbor’s green spectrum cable pillar out front of my home. Driver jumped out wearing a basic neon vest (as though he was ‘official’) and opened the pillar, crouched down and did something (couldn’t clearly see his exact actions as it caught me off guard, while communicating with a guy in the passenger seat).
Then he walked across the street towards my pillar and I went out to ask what was going on (as I’ve had official Spectrum technicians come by in the past and am reasonably familiar with what an official visit looks like). As I approached, I could hear them communicating in what resembled an Eastern European language. I said “Hi, can I help you, is everything alright?”…which interrupted them…and the guy in the vest waved me away in poor english saying “fine fine fine.”
Not wanting to escalate, I said, okay sure, and watched them move along to our next neighbors house while they did the same thing. They kept going door to door and hopping out for between 30 seconds to 2 minutes at every pillar. 1 guy would jump out and open it up, other guy stayed in passenger seat.
The combination of all of this was sketchy enough for me to alert local police dispatch who said they’d investigate, and contact spectrum, who said they didn’t have any technicians scheduled in our area, and were going to escalate this to leadership and send out local dispatch to try and see what might have been going on…
I still have no idea if I’m overreacting, but my sense was that these guys were up to something fishy, and both police and spectrum tend to agree…I just have no idea what it could be…what could they be gaining by opening up everybody’s box and doing some kind of hacking/sniffing/blocking??
As far as I know, the only thing inside these pillars is a weatherproofed coaxial internet cable that connects into each home? We are not on fiber.
Thanks for any insight as I continue to play detective.