The cable company used to have vans that patrolled the streets pointing detectors at homes to see if they were watching cable, but not paying for it. The tube sets were apparently quite the IF radiators. The van’s equipment made a computerized comparison between what the detector picked up from your set and comparing it to what was on cable at the moment and then seeing if you had subscribed. There were lots of ways to jack the boxes and get the premium channels. Some of my neighbors got letters with a bill and threats of legal actions. (I had the full service back when it was only 12.50 per month and that included HBO. But it kept going up, and up, and up. Finally, I dropped cable and they tried to lure me back with a better deal. They operate on the razorblade theory, only the blades keep getting more and more costly.)
Years ago I was a manager in a cable company.
One of our tricks was to intentionally disconnect entire apartment buildings, then wait for each individual resident to call.
If they were current in their bill, they were reconnected.
If not, they were not connected.
In some buildings as many as half the folks were stealing the service up until that point.
Rinse and repeat once a year, (once a quarter in really bad areas) and it was amazing how the number of paying customers improved...
One house at a time is the _hard_ way...
My motto—work smarter, not harder. :-)