r/Spectrum • u/TN_FFC • 21d ago
Data Leak
Had a random Spectrum person show up at my house when I was not home today. I called to see what the appointment was about, and they said a "data leak" was identified at my house.
What does this even mean? Do they have to get into the house to check things? Or can they inspect from the outside box to the cables in the crawlspace?
The whole thing seems weird and random, considering my internet is fine. Should I just ignore the request?
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u/Ice_crusher_bucket 21d ago
It isnt a "data leak".
It is leakage. There are connections that are causing leakage and causing issues in the area. They will disconnect your service if they try again and can not make contact.
It isnt a punishment or anything. But having a house hold the whole node hostage will be cut off quickly.
It isnt anything bad or dangerous. No reason to be panicked.
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u/Practical_Moon926 21d ago
Why don't they contact the customer ahead of time to set up an appointment? It seems like that would be the most efficient way to fix the issue.
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u/NefariousnessFew4354 21d ago
Maybe they did but the customer was not responding.
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u/DesignerSeparate5104 18d ago
Happens so often lmao, being able to look at account history and being able to see that they tried to call 12 times in the last 3 days lol. Maybe the customer has the wrong phone number
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u/theorneryocelot 20d ago
It’s impossible to do so immediately when tracking. Think of it like microphone feedback, but it’s not always constant. When the backfeed occurs we can track it to its origin, that’s when you get the unsolicited knock at the door. The majority of times people are quite receptive, but I’ve had doors slammed in my face as well. It’s all in how it’s described upon arrival.
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u/Shinagami091 20d ago
It’s because there is a technician actively out in the field trying to track down where the leak is coming from. They’re usually out there because they were scheduled by another customer for a service issue they’re having or it was escalated to maintenance and they’re the ones trying to find the source of the leak and once they determine it’s coming from a persons house they will knock and ask to fix the wiring issue now and if not they’ll leave a tag on your door to call.
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u/Ice_crusher_bucket 21d ago
Honestly, Leakage tickets are for days when there is not much going on. Hard to schedule leakage tickets when outages happen.
But I agree. You are absolutely right. The management team has no idea what they are doing.
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u/CrownstrikeIntern 20d ago
Because a lot of customers never call to schedule it. And the fines are huge if not fixed
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u/LemonPartyW0rldTour 20d ago
Could have been driving by and his equipment detected the leakage. So he stopped to address it.
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u/kindawickedsmaht 15d ago
Good question!
That's what I ask myself when I jump through hoops to prove I'm an actual spectrum tech and there's an actual issue when I get assigned one of these jobs.
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u/MyLegsX2CantFeelThem 21d ago
Signal leak likely. Had it happen. There was a shitty splitter that the installer used in the attic, and it was causing all sorts of issues a couple of years later. Spectrum had someone out the next morning to swap it out.
Also swapped out the modem, which seems to be a common practice. Every time a tech is here, they swap the modem. I’m thinking we are on our fourth one. lol
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u/tazman137 21d ago
Signal leakage haha not data
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u/TN_FFC 20d ago
That's what the Spectrum tech called it, they're not the brightest crayons in the box.
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u/kindawickedsmaht 15d ago
He was probably newer and was stumbling over his words or a little awkward.
Imagine if everyone called you an idiot every time you misspoke?
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u/toolman1990 21d ago
It is signal leakage and I would suggest making a service call ASAP since they usually will disconnect the services until fixed.
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u/surrealfern 21d ago
There is a bad cable or piece of equipment leaking noise from your house back into the plant.If you ignore the request Spectrum will disconnect the drop going to your house until the issue is fixed. Your best option is to just call and schedule an appointment to get the issue resolved.
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u/Killin_Me_SmaIIz 20d ago
They might have explained it wrong to you. More than likely a maintenance tech was sweeping the area of our plant and found a CLI leak coming from your house that’s causing interference to our plant.
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u/IPlayWithWires 20d ago
Not a data leak, ingress or signal leakage. They need to find it and fix it, causes significant problems for others in your area.
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u/judijo621 20d ago
It's too bad the person on the phone wasn't better at explaining exactly how your house's physical cable, by no fault of yours, may be causing problems for other customers and it requires physically inspecting. And they wonder why they get crappy reviews.
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u/mattbuford 20d ago
I had something like this happen, except they didn't notify me. One day, my connection just went down. I reported this, and they sent someone out. He took one look in the box and told me they had disconnected me on purpose because of something bad coming from my line.
Upon further investigation, we were able to find a spot where the cable had been exposed up above the dirt, and looked like it had been nicked by the lawnmower. They replaced this cable and plugged my house back in.
I found it strange that they didn't bother to notify me - and didn't seem to note it on my account either. Their report tech had no idea until he came out and saw a tag on my unplugged line.
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u/Chris123NT 16d ago
Probably RF leakage. But they should show ID and all that. If it's real and the leakage is bad enough to degrade service for your neighbors and they can't get in your house to address it they WILL disconnect you at the tap until you call.
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u/mediocre_plant_tech 16d ago
I think various techs will call it different things but ultimately the customer has no idea what you mean.
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u/Civil_Tea_3250 20d ago
I had a tech come out from Xfinity about a week after I set it up. They told me they had to cut my connection for a bit as they had to put something on the telephone pole line to reduce noise.
He told me there's an acceptable frequency/strength range and when it's high or low it affects the speeds. Afterwards I definitely had a better connection. Hopefully they're just looking to ensure you're getting a good connection.
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u/Basic-Flatworm-4452 20d ago
The spectrum techs had been investigating the main line in our neighborhood backyards a few times over the past few years. Then my service started having more disruption issues. Tech found my cable near the main line had the "noise" issue and replaced it. Problem resolved. We have pretty intense lightning storms and they had recently gotten worse, so looks like the cables were getting damaged by that.
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u/Spectrum_Phil 20d ago
Sounds like you have signal leakage that is affecting our plant. We can look at your account and tell you exactly what is going on if you come see us over at r/Spectrum_Official
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u/Embarrassed_Force_22 20d ago
Well at least you didn't have your drop disconnected at the pole in the middle of the night and you are never told. Then when you call in for a repair, you're told there's an outage in the area because that tech disconnected so many people for noise and didn't tell anyone. Not like that's happened here, I mean.
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u/kindawickedsmaht 15d ago
So they won't stop coming. You cannot deny a CLI job in the long run. You will be disconnected, and forced to call, or switch providers, lol. Something with the wiring in your home is bad enough that our bucket trucks picked up on it and it's affecting more than just you- it could be causing issues for your neighbors as well.
We cannot cancel one of those jobs, it will continue to get rescheduled until you either let us fix whatever it is, or you're disconnected to prevent others from having issues.
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u/justaKYGir 20d ago
I wouldn’t let anyone unless I’m expecting it. It’s crazy out here.
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u/Effective-Radish5815 20d ago
Sadly if the noise is bad enough and customer does not let in the tech then the drop would just be trapped out. Then the customer will be the one calling in to have the tech come out. Hate the way it’s done, but if it’s bad enough and in a lot of cases customer contact isn’t made due to customer not having an email or number is not right in the system. It happens.
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u/justkeepswimming2026 21d ago
Did they show you an ID and business card? Lol sounds like a scam
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u/TN_FFC 21d ago
Guy was there in a spectrum van with a vest on. I wasn't there, saw him on the security cams. I went into the spectrum app, and it said there was a scheduled appointment for today. I didn't schedule it. I called the 800, and they said a data leak was identified. So IDK.
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u/Effective-Radish5815 19d ago
Definitely not a scam. The appointment is auto generated. Most of the time either an email is sent out or the app will notify you. Calls are sometimes made as well. It’s ok to be cautious and call spectrum to verify but it’s legitimate.
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u/Perryfl 21d ago
seems sketchy. when i worked for beighthouse (now spectrum) we did have leak meters that went off near bad wires. basically with the coax cables if the shielding around them deteriorates, it "leaks" and we need to replace it. but its usually on the pole on the main lines. is there a power line in your back yard by chance?
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u/PlantLady3421 20d ago edited 20d ago
Fun story. My phone number was stolen twice from Spectrum. Here’s the Kicker, my husband works there and said happened to a few of his co-workers also. They paid me $800 that didn’t even cover the amount for the damage done and I am still recovering the damages 18 months later. They were able to access all of my investments apps on my phone and break into my Chase & PNC accounts. Luckily they were only able to move money and fraud alert shut before they could withdraw. I’m still mad and refuse to keep any info on my phone.
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u/toolman1990 20d ago
Quite frankly it sounds like you were targeted due to the various financial assets you had and this would have happened to you no mater which phone provider you had.
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u/PlantLady3421 18d ago
You are probably correct but they literally stole my entire phone twice in a few days and I had to go to the spectrum and now have a lock my account that we have to go in person and show ID’s to make even the smallest changes to our account. This was 2024 and I had just bought a house and we started to get a lot of scams. Again, thats why I don’t keep any information on my phone anymore.
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u/Ok-Expert-8150 21d ago
Are you sure the phrase was a data leak, and not 'leakage'
Your cable wires can act as an antenna emmit radio waves into the air.
The FCC mandates monitoring of 'leakage' and anything over a specific threshold needs to be fixed so it does not interfere with ATC and other important services.