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Piracy increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Internet piracy authority Muzzle and South African ISPs.
However, the way illegal content is consumed and accessed has evolved, with a major move towards streaming rather than downloads.
Muso’s data showed that there were significant increases in movie and television piracy once the global lockdown began, and global movie piracy increased by over 33% when comparing the last 7 days of March with the last 7 April days. In the US, this figure increased to 41%, while the UK saw a 43% increase in piracy.
Muso noted that it had tracked more than 174 billion visits to hacking sites, but this is likely to be usurped by a significant margin in 2020.
“Piracy activity was already high, but early data indicates that it could increase considerably,” Muso said.
MyBroadband spoke with local ISPs, who said there has been an increase in piracy in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
South African Pirates Go Online Streaming
Vox told MyBroadband that it has seen a significant increase in pirated content.
“Unfortunately, there is still a lot of illegal hacked activity on the part of our clients,” said Chief of Security Niel van Rooyen.
However, he explained that the nature of piracy has changed in South Africa, and local pirates have adapted their consumption habits.
“The last few years show that it is not so much about ‘pirated video downloads or torrents’ anymore, but that the problem lies in illegal streaming online,” said van Rooyen.
He also said that studies have shown that the amount of piracy is increasing by roughly 80% and that fighting this often seems impossible.
“Vox has relevant processes and monitoring to detect and respond, but unfortunately, with these illegal entities always one step ahead, it is like fighting a losing battle,” van Rooyen said.
“As soon as one site has been removed, another appears. It’s a great challenge. “
RSAWEB said that, on a more positive note, traffic to uTorrent has dropped between 60% and 80%.
“Our data indicates that customers with higher bandwidth links are less likely to pirate movies and series,” added RSAWEB.
The ISP also noted that it has an email address dedicated to hacking and abuse, which users can use to report such actions: [email protected].
The risks of online piracy
In April, Microsoft warned users that there had been a significant increase in malware and ransomware embedded in illegal media.
“With the blockade still in place in many parts of the world, attackers are paying attention to the increase in the use of pirated streaming services and torrent downloads,” Microsoft Security Intelligence warned in Twitter.
“We saw an active coin mining campaign that inserts malicious VBScript into ZIP files posing as movie downloads.”
“The use of torrenting is consistent with our observation that attackers are reusing old techniques to take advantage of the current crisis,” the company added.
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