Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks used for ‘industrial scale’ piracy, study reveals

According to a report by analysis Enders, Amazon streaming devices such as fire TV Fire are used more and more for hacking. Research shows that more than half of all people in the United Kingdom who have used illegal streaming services this year have done it using an Amazon product.

It is a hacking on an “industrial scale”, Amazon being accused of having allowed the consumption of hazarded content by inaction and the low security measures. A complete overhaul of fire television sticks is necessary to prevent illegal use, according to the Enders analysis.

How are fire television sticks illegally used?

Amazon’s Fire TV Stick is intended to provide rapid Plug-And-Play access to streaming services such as Prime Video and Netflix, users simply needing to connect the device to the HDMI port of a TV to make it work. With simple changes, however, the device can also be used to access illegal live flows with television providers and paid sports networks.

To worsen things, these modified fire television sticks can apparently be purchased for inexpensive on the black market. Last year, for example, several men were captured and sentenced to prison for having sold such modified streaming devices, such as reported by The Independent.

Despite television networks and streaming services that lose billions of income each year due to this practice and similar practices, some still think that companies like Amazon do not deal with the problem seriously.

What does Amazon think about it?

In a statement, Amazon told The Independent that he was “vigilant in [their] The efforts to fight against hacking “and had already” made changes to the fire sticks to dissuade people from distributing illegal content “.

“The hacked content violates our policies concerning intellectual property rights and compromises the security and confidentiality of our customers,” said Amazon spokesperson.

However, piracy cases still seem to occur and some studies show that more and more users consume illegal streaming content, especially in Europe.

Amazon is not the only company to be criticized, with other major technological companies – including Google, Microsoft and Meta – also named in the report. They are accused of having contributed to the problem, mainly by inaction. However, how content providers should solve the growing hacking problem are not clear.

Above all, the real problem is perhaps that legitimate users of streaming services face a fragmented and upward market, which seems to make hacking more attractive. That said, it is not because hacking is practical and inexpensive that it’s okay. Potential hackers must remember that copyright violation is a crime.

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