The scammers were so good they fooled Cox…
According to TorrentFreak, scammers are using anti-piracy tracking company – IP-Echelon and rights holders like Lionsgate to send false DMCA notices and settlement agreements to internet service providers (ISPs).
There are two antipiracy companies which are known for sending direct DMCA notices with a settlement fee, to ISPs – these are Rightscorp and CEG TEK. Besides these two, there are not any others known to proceed in this manner. However, scammers portraying themselves as Lionsgate recently sent a DMCA takedown notice to a Cox subscriber who had downloaded a pirated copy of the movie – Allegiant. As well as a takedown notice, the subscriber was also faced with the ultimatum of paying a settlement fee of $150, or face legal action.
TF was alerted by this and their suspicions grew, so they decided to reach out to IP-Echelon and Lionsgate, to which IP-Echelon responded…
”The notices are fake and not sent by us. It’s a phishing scam. The case is being investigated by US law enforcement.”
The fact that scammers are getting away with this is worrying, but what’s even more shocking is that Cox were initially fooled by them. The scammers were clever – they knew that once they had sent the DMCA notice to Cox, Cox would forward this to their subscriber – which they did. This made the request look more authentic. The customer then responded to Cox asking whether it was ‘real’ or a ‘scam’ – this still didn’t make Cox question the authenticity of it, and Cox responded confirming that it was ‘real’. Though, later they did in fact discover that they had fallen victim to a scam.
Now, any internet subscribers who have received a settlement demand from IP-Echelon are being prompted to make their internet service providers aware of this.
(Pixaby Image, CC0 Public Domain)
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