Several Arizona residents have reported receiving e-mail allegedly from Cox Communications requiring customers to update or upgrade their account, but in reality, the e-mail comes from a group of fraudsters trying to commit identity theft. The Pima County Sheriff’s Office has sent an open warning alerting cable customers in Arizona and beyond that if you receive an e-mail claiming you need to update or upgrade your account, disregard it, especially if it carries a deadline that warns your service will be disconnected if you don’t respond within a matter of days.

Customers who click on a link in the email will be taken to a phony Cox Communications website, where you will be prompted to provide your username, password and birth date. The sheriff’s office warns providing this information could start a series of criminal events that will not end well:

Why does this company need your birthdate? They want to steal from you. Do not provide any information to the purveyors of this scam.

Two vital pieces of information the fraudsters are always looking for are your date of birth and Social Security number. Anytime you are asked for this information over the phone in a call you did not initiate, or in an email from an unknown source, stop and ask, “Why?” Who wants to use this information?

If you receive requests that you have not initiated or you have not placed the call — a red flag should appear. Do not provide this information unless you know for a fact to whom you are speaking.

Your date of birth and/or Social Security number give the fraudsters have all the information they need to begin identity theft. The scammers can now open accounts in your name, make high-volume charges and ruin your credit. They are capable of doing this without your knowledge.

If they were to attack your established accounts first, your bank or credit card company may notify you of possible unauthorized activity. However, we have knowledge of unauthorized accounts operating for long periods of time while making large-dollar purchases. The scammers make minimal payments until the account is maxed out. Since the statement comes to a phony address established by them, the credit card company has to make a concerted effort to locate you because you no longer are making payments on this “zombie” account. When the company finally calls you, you are in shock! You had no knowledge of this account.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Office recommends consumers obtain a free credit report every four months by staggering requests for a free annual credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies. This will identify any new accounts you might be unaware of and prevent identity thieves from causing catastrophic damage to your credit score and reputation.

• EQUIFAX: P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA. 30371, 1-888-766-0008.
• EXPERIAN: 701 Experian Pkwy. Allen, TX. 75013 1-888 EXPERIAN (397-3742)
• TRANSUNION: Fraud Victim Assistance Div., P.O. Box 679, Fullerton, CA. 92834-6790. 1-800-680-7289.

A yearly report including credit reports from all three agencies is also obtainable at no cost by calling 1-877-322-8228 or visiting www.annualcreditreport.com.

Time Warner’s Enhanced DVR works fine, but those avoiding TWC equipment run into DRM problems.

If you’re accustomed to using Time Warner Cable’s DVR box, you probably don’t realize how heavy-handed Time Warner Cable can be with copy protection, but as set-top box alternatives proliferate, more customers are encountering the frustration of digital rights restrictions.

For several years, customers using alternatives to Time Warner’s set-top boxes or who wanted to store their DVR recordings on another hard drive quickly discovered the cable operator heavily enforces copy protection mechanisms designed to thwart digital archival copies of programs recorded from cable television.

Copy Control Information (CCI) is an invisible flag sent in digital television signals that is designed to give control to copyright owners over how their shows can be duplicated. Since at least 2007, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers have been frustrated if they use their own DVR or devices like TiVo. When customers attempt to copy their recorded shows to other devices or playback units in their home, the CCI flag often stops the copy cold.

ZatzNotFunny has covered this issue for years, noting Time Warner Cable, Bright House, and Cox have been particularly unfriendly to third-party set-top boxes like TiVo.

Among cable operators, the most common flags are Copy Freely and Copy Once. Many cable operators set their basic cable network CCI flags to “copy freely,” while premium pay movie channels like HBO are set to “copy once” — primarily to allow time-shifting devices like a DVR to record the show. Once your DVR has a copy of a show with a restricted flag, it cannot be copied again.

Digital Rights Management policies are part of the nation’s struggle between Hollywood-inspired copy protection and the public’s right to make and store recordings of programming for their own personal use. Some telecom companies like Verizon and Comcast have come down more in favor of consumers, while Time Warner Cable and Bright House (which have traditionally shared engineering practices and programming contracts for at least a decade) are far more responsive to Hollywood. The result for subscribers with $200 cable bills is endless frustration, especially if they choose not to use the pricey set-top boxes and DVRs supplied by the TWC or Bright House.

CableCARD and TiVo users, as well as those relying on Extenders for Windows Media Center like the Xbox 360 are often stymied by CCI flags, especially when a consumer tries to watch a show in one room and finish it in another using Multi-Room Viewing features.

ZatzNotFunny rates TWC, Bright House and Cox as unfriendly to alternative set-top boxes like TiVo. (Image: ZatzNotFunny)

Wikipedia supplies insight into the available CCI options cable operators can choose to use for cable television channels:

• 0x00 – Copy freely – Content is not copy protected.
• 0x01 – Copy No More – A copy of the content has already occurred and no more copies are permitted.†
• 0x02 – Copy Once – One recording can be made, but it cannot be copied to another device.†
• 0x03 – Copy Never – the content can be recorded and viewed for 90 minutes after transmission, and is not transferable.†
• 0x04 – Content is Copy Once for digital output, but would have Macrovision 7 Day Unlimited restriction applied on the analog outputs. This affects content viewed either on an HDTV with component cabling or on a standard definition TV. It also affects content saved to VCR or DVD when the recorder is connected to an analog output on the DVR.†
• 0x07 – Content is Copy Never for digital content (deleted after 90 minutes) and Macrovision 7 day/24 hour for content recorded from analog channels. Content cannot be transferred via TiVoToGo transfers or MRV, and cannot be saved to VCR or DVD.†

† – Any live stream with a CCI flag set higher than 0x00 is to be encrypted or protected in a way that only trusted platforms that will obey the flag (Such as Microsoft’s PlayReady system used in Windows Media center) can access it.

A Time Warner Cable customer known as MachineShedFred noticed this problem first hand and wrote about it in a complaint to Time Warner Cable back in March, and Stop the Cap! reader Chris N. pointed us to this ongoing issue:

The only software that allows me to use the CableCARD hardware that you officially support and distribute is Windows Media Center, which Microsoft is no longer developing, and is no longer distributing.  All other DVR software available for every platform will not work, as they cannot decrypt the video stream due to the abuse of the CCI flag.

No other cable company in the US abuses the CCI flag in this manner, and every other cable subscriber in the US that isn’t on Time Warner has a wide choice of solutions for enjoying their service better than we can as your subscribers.  Why are you restricting the choices of your subscribers for no reason?  It’s clearly not contractual from the media networks, as they would have pushed for the same stipulations with at least one of your competitors.  Yet, anyone outside of TWC’s monopoly can use any other software they want.

When even Comcast allows their subscribers more subscriber-friendly choices, you know you’re doing it wrong.  Please revisit this ridiculous policy and cease the overuse of the CopyOnce CCI flag that unduly burdens your subscribers by forcing them to replace perfectly good hardware, or replace YOU.

Some believed this problem could eventually resolve itself with Charter Communications’ buyout of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Would Charter bring their own policies to affected TWC/BH customers, or will Charter customers soon have to contend with the CCI CopyOnce flag loved by Time Warner Cable as well.

An official complaint to the FCC brought a cryptic non-answer answer from William Wesselman, Time Warner Cable’s regulatory compliance counsel. Wesselman implied the liberal use of the CCI  CopyOnce flag was the result of restrictions in contracts with major programmers, which seems unlikely because other cable operators — larger and smaller — have successfully navigated around this issue. Wesselman’s answer implies as Time Warner Cable and Bright House are brought into the Charter hegemony, “the policies of the two companies will ultimately become the same.”

Of course, he never defines which policy Charter, TWC and BH customers across the country will eventually get by sometime in 2017.

Mr. Wesselman’s full response:

At this time, TWC and Charter continue to integrate their two systems into one. Both TWC and Charter, like other distributors of multichannel video programming, negotiate the distribution rights for the content it carries independently with individual rights holders. These bilateral commercial negotiations take into consideration many different factors, include the content protection and digital rights management requirements of the rights holder; applicable law, license and regulations; and the interests of subscribers. Each of these commercial negotiations, and the terms of the agreements that result, are unique to the specific distributor and programmer involved. As the integration of the two companies continues, Mr. X will notice that the policies of the two companies will ultimately become the same based on our agreements.

Cox Communications is requiring cable customers to add a cable box to their television set(s) or they will start losing channels as the company continues its nationwide effort to digitally encrypt all of its television services.

Customers in Las Vegas are the latest to be pushed to add a digital adapter, dubbed a “minibox” by Sept. 27 or they will start losing channels. By Nov. 9, all cable channels are expected to be encrypted and on Dec. 6, local stations will also be encrypted and viewable only with a cable box or similar equipment.

Cox calls the move a customer-pleasing “upgrade.”

“It will enable us to implement more advanced services down the road,” Cox spokesman Juergen Barbusca told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We deployed home automation in the last couple of years and home security. We are trying to get as much bandwidth out of your cable potential as possible and one way to do that is to go completely digital.”

Cox customers with a basic Starter package of more than 40 channels at $24.99 a month will get two miniboxes free for two years. Those with the second tier Essential package ($75.99) with more than 90 channels will get two miniboxes free for one year. You read that right. If you pay Cox more, you get free boxes for half the time lower-paying customers do. Each additional box is $2.99 a month. A traditional HD-capable set-top box from Cox rents for $8.50 a month.

Cox’s miniboxes are more advanced that traditional digital adapters provided by some other cable companies, supporting service like Music Choice, HDTV, parental controls and an on-screen program guide.

Customers are generally okay with getting the boxes for free, but are convinced it will cause their cable bills to rise in the years ahead.

“I’m not happy with that. That’s more money and I’m only getting basic service. I’m already at $146 a month for cable, internet and phone,” Cox customer Monique Patton said. “Not everybody can afford that. It’s too expensive now. They’re not giving us what they should for our money.”

A Cox Cable technician took his sweet time working on cable television service for the Nuzum family, spending almost two hours getting television service working but only took a few minutes to allegedly rifle through the Iowa family’s prescription medications.

Council Bluffs police promptly arrested 36-year-old Patrick Darrah after forcing him to turn out his pockets, revealing prescription medicine authorities believe was stolen from the family along with 11 other pills, including painkillers and stimulants.

“Just his demeanor while he was here, just left me a little uneasy,” Amy Nuzum told Omaha’s KETV. He should have taken kratom instead of illegal medication if he had trouble with pain. There are many stores in Council Bluffs where you can buy all different strains of kratom for pain, like white vietnam, white malay, white maeng da, and red malay kratom in the evenings.

The Nuzums report Darrah spent the better part of two hours on the cable service call, abruptly leaving even though the televisions were not all working.

Mrs. Nuzum suspected something was wrong and checked the upstairs where she said Darrah was left briefly alone.

“I thought of prescription medications. And went into the bathroom and found that a prescription that should have had 21 pills only had 13. And my heart just dropped,” she said.

Mr. Duzum called the Cox Cable tech’s cell phone to ask why he left with the work unfinished. Mrs. Duzum called Council Bluffs police. By the time both calls ended, Darrah suddenly reappeared in the family’s yard, where Mr. Duzum confronted him.

Darrah

“I asked him you know, did you take any prescription medication out of my house? And he said no. And I asked him three times, and he said no,” Tony Nuzum told the TV station.

Police led the cable technician away and the Nuzum family hopes he can get help for his problem. But they also want to send a message to cable customers.

“Be careful when you let someone in to your home, even if they’re with a reputable company, you still have to have your guard up,” Amy Nuzum said.

Like many cable operators confronted with the alleged bad deeds of those who represent them, Cox Cable quickly disavowed Darrah, claiming he was actually an employee of ITC, a contractor Cox uses for service calls. ITC has reportedly fired Darrah. As a goodwill gesture, Cox said the company will install its home security system at the Nuzum’s home, free of charge.

KETV in Omaha featured this Iowa family, who believe a Cox Cable technician stole their prescription medication during a service call. (1:58)

Comcast has confirmed new Altice USA and Charter Communications customers that used to subscribe to Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks will be able to continue accessing the free nationwide Cable WiFi roaming service, even though Altice and Charter are not members of the consortium that runs it.

“The Cable WiFi consortium remains in place following the recent merger and acquisitions activity,” a Comcast spokesperson told FierceCable. “Subscribers of each [company] that were previously entitled to use the CableWiFi hotspots continue to enjoy access. Access points that were made available by each [affected cable operator] continue to provide CableWiFi service.”

The network allows any Comcast, Cablevision/Altice USA, Charter/Time Warner Cable, Charter/Bright House Networks, and Cox Communications broadband customer to access a network of 500,000 nationwide Wi-Fi hotspots run by the five cable operators. Customers will know if they are in range of a hotspot by finding CableWiFi as an available connection. Broadband subscribers can log in using the same credentials they use when logging into their cable operator’s website.

It is unknown if Charter Communications or Altice USA will join the consortium directly, which would expand the network to cover legacy Charter customers and those signed up with Suddenlink, another Altice-owned operator.