How does a cable company know whether or not you are receiving their signal?

In the old days (pre-digital cable), the cable companies didn’t really know. That made cable theft of service fairly easy.

Currently, any cable system that uses digital cable has cable boxes (or cable cards) that use a specific digital identifier (not unlike the MAC address that your PC or laptop of phone has to connect to the internet). Any cable connection reads the digital ID of the cable box, and matches it to the one(s) on file for that customer, and then lets the signal go down the line.

So the question I would have – in your apartment, is it digital cable or analog cable? From the sound of it, it’s analog, because that signal can’t be controlled / limited in the same way.

Except if you are a Time Warner Cable customer, all feeds in my area will be digital only later this year.
You will need a serialized box between the TV, VCR or what ever you are using.
The cable company can “talk to the box” or “ping it.”

I’m in the eastern USA.

My Comcast box can be controlled from the office. It’s one of the things they do when they report an outage. They can also verify the internet connection if you use a cable modem, Comcast can tell whether you have upgraded to the Xfinity modem or are still on the old modem.

As the old “Outer Limts” show used to say, “We control the horizontal and the vertical…”

But what if there is no box?

@rojo – see my comment—you are likely on analog if you dont have a box.

If there’s no box then it’s an analog signal and they really can’t tell. If there is a box then it’s a digital signal and probably simply an oversight on their part.