The UK is one of the world’s live streaming piracy hotspots, a new report has found.
According to the Global Consumer Piracy Threat report from cybersecurity firm Irdeto, during the first quarter of 2018 an average of 1,714,000 UK-based people per month visited a selection of the biggest piracy-focused live-streaming sites on the web.
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The reports ranks the UK in second place for live-streaming piracy, with only the US ahead of us. The top five live-streaming piracy hotspots are listed below:
- US – 2,934,000
- UK – 1,714,000
- Germany – 1,519,000
- France – 1,488,000
- Canada – 704,897
“With the proliferation of high-speed broadband services, live streaming piracy has become increasingly popular, with pirates developing professional looking linking sites that provide links to a series of illegal content streams, allowing viewers to bypass rights holders,” the report says.
“Based on an analysis of traffic to the top ten live streaming linking sites during Q1 2018, provided by our web analytics partner, it was found that there was an average of 74 million global visits per month to these sites.”
For its report, Irdeto also monitored more than 15 Dark Web marketplaces throughout April 2018, and found 854 listings for “legitimate user credentials from 42 different OTT services including Netflix, HBO, DirecTV and Hulu”.
As the pie chart below shows, most of these credentials were found on Dream Market, Zion Market and Wall Street Market.
Image: Irdeto
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“Many credentials for international and regional accounts were detected and, of all these listings, the average one-off price for a stolen account was just $8.71 (roughly £6.60),” the report says.
“Some vendors also sell bundles of credentials at a higher price, providing more value for the money. Across all eight marketplaces where credentials were observed to be sold, Irdeto detected 69 unique sellers.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.