Came across this new scam when trawling the internet news sites. Anyone ever heard of Ben Dover? Well, it is the porn name of a bloke called Simon Honey who has seen his porn income drop by about 90% over the last few years so now he is taking it upon himself to threaten court action with alleged file sharers. Though the technology used to track these copyright infringer's is far from certain.. He runs a group called Golden Eye (International) Ltd and they have recently won a court order to obtain the names and addresses of over 9000 O2 broadband customers that they reckon have downloaded or shared porn titles owned by Golden Eye! Then they get to send each of those people a letter demanding £700 or we will take you to court. A classic shakedown! Anyway, the problem is that many innocent people will get these letters as IP addresses can be shared, changed and even faked. They in themselves cannot be used as proof that a person has broken copyright law and without the accused admitting their own guilt, the case is flimsy at best.. Full Story Here
This is quite an old scam now. Watchdog did an item about it a few years ago and owner of one law firm was hauled before an SRA tribunal and suspended for a while. And even some of the really big UK law firms have been sending out these 'invoices' on behalf of clients. Some ISPs now refuse to disclose such information without a court order, which is probably why only O2 is mentioned in the article; other ISPs probably caved in without a court order. Those who use wi-fi routers unencrypted are probably most at risk from this and even older WEP routers are not immune as the encryption is readily broken. You really need to use a WPA2-encrypted router with a very strong password, or simply not use wi-fi at all.
99% of routers that are incripted have the password printed on the label of the router. The router is usually next to the telephone or nearby... So, if someone comes into your home and takes a look at the router (or even takes a picture of it), then they have your password and can log in from a nearby location! Has your neighbour ever popped round for say... A summer BBQ?
