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Fire Stick users warned they 'really could' face jail over dodgy devices
Fire Stick users warned they 'really could' face jail over dodgy devices
The maximum penalty is five years in prison and the head of the agency cracking down said the threat is real
The remote control of an Amazon Fire TV Stick
An urgent warning has been issued to millions of people in the UK who have Amazon Fire Sticks loaded with specific software—as they could face prison. The head of the Federation Against Copyright Theft said people who use Fire Sticks for illegal streaming also risk identity theft, fraud and damage to their TVs and tech thanks to malware.
The criminals who sell you the pirate services could even access any camera or microphone attached to your TV or Amazon devices - recording you and your family in your home without you knowing.
An investigation by The Mirror found tens of thousands of adverts for 'pirate' services openly posted on Facebook. Many are for doctored Fire Sticks which offer bundles of thousands of channels for a few pounds a month. One UK mobile number is being used across 800 Facebook Marketplace ads for Fire Stick 'packages' for as little as £6.
Customers are urged to contact the criminals via WhatsApp, and the adverts are posted by over 100 different Facebook users, all accounts created in the last few months, and located across the country.
One seller is offereing 'All Sky channels, all sports channels, all football events, Netflix, HBO, Disney +, Amazon Prime and Apple' for as little as £2.50 a month. Prices started at £35 for a six month subscription to £150 for a five-year deal. A football fan wanting to follow all the Premier League action legally would need to pay nearly £50 a month for the cheapest Sky, TNT and Prime deals.
Our crooked seller claimed to be from a company called IPTV, claiming: 'It's [an] online service to provide channels on fire stick, smart TVs, android TVs, mobile phone as well. We can provide subscriptions to other countries like Australia, USA and Canada.'
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In January, a man streaming illegal TV to thousands from his home in Birmingham was jailed for two years. Criminals are also harvesting the personal details of thousands of their customers, including their card payment information.
Kieron Sharp, chairman of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, said that in the last five years, FACT has been involved in 23 prosecutions leading to 36 criminals being jailed for an average of nearly three years each.
In January, Sunny Kumar Kanda from Halifax, West Yorks, was jailed for two years at York Crown Court for supplying modified Fire Sticks through a Facebook group with nearly 4,000 members. In December, FACT led a two-week crackdown with police from 15 forces which targeted 30 illegal services.
Kieron said: 'This has been a problem forever, since the days of pirated video cassettes and DVDs. But the rise of streaming has made things easier for the criminal in the same way as it has made things easier for the legal consumer. Is it any more of a problem than it was years ago? That's very difficult to say. There's no complete picture of the landscape.'
The Intellectual Property Office has estimated that 6.2m Brits access illegally streamed TV and 3.9m people watch pirated live sport. Kieron said: 'We have adopted the attitude over the years that we would rather not criminalise the end user.
'If we take out a gang and they have a customer database, we would normally write to the consumers on that customer list telling them 'What you are doing is breaking the law and you will have to stop'. We would like to think that they would start paying for that content.
'But it is entirely possible that consumers could get swept up in our investigations. It would be a discussion for everybody involved in the business to see if that is an area that we would want to go down. It could happen, it really could. I would never say to any of the consumers through the messaging that we do that they are not going to get prosecuted because that just isn't correct.'
When 29-year-old illegal Fire Stick seller Jonathan Edge, from Liverpool, was jailed for more than three years in November, he was also sentenced to two years and three months in prison for personally accessing and viewing the pirated content he distributed.
FACT said watching an illegal stream was an offence under the Fraud Act 2006, with a maximum penalty of five year's imprisonment.
Fraudsters can also raid your bank account, steal your identity and even hijack your camera and microphone. 'There is a risk from using these devices, it is not just us saying this,' Kieron said. 'People should be warned about this. There's a real risk of having your identity stolen or similar. If you give over your credit card details, you are giving them to criminals.
'They could get access to the camera on your TV, if it has one, or microphone. There is no safety or security with what you are getting with these modified devices. Some people set them up just to get your personal details.' A recent report by Enders Analysis found three in five who used a physical device for piracy in the last 12 months used a Fire Stick, according to Sky.
Amazon said it had made changes to Fire TV to make it harder to stream pirated content and that it warned customers against 'sideloaded apps '. An Amazon spokesperson said: 'Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights, and compromises the security and privacy of our customers.
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'We remain vigilant in our efforts to combat piracy and protect customers from the risks associated with pirated content, which includes prohibiting apps that infringe upon the rights of third parties in our Appstore, and warning customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources.'
