Spyware, viruses, & security forum: Help! I was sent a copyright infringement notice from ISP

Copyright infringement notification is just the ISP's way of saying "we don't approve of file-sharing programs." I offer that they don't approve because:
1. The ISP also offers TV, On demand movies, and maybe games too- things the company wants you to purchase rather than download freebies.
2. The ISP wants to please the music/movie/gaming industries, which would love to see file-sharing sites and programs shut-down.
3. They would prefer if you wouldn't use the high-bandwidth required of their network to download and upload files for file-sharing programs. Did you know that it's estimated that HALF of the traffic on the internet is for file-sharing?

Basically, their profit is the primary reason your ISP is sending the copy-right infringement notice. You won't get in trouble for file-sharing copy-righted material - a lawyer would have a field day if someone actually got arrested for file-sharing over the internet. How did YOU get singled-out as one of the millions sharing files? Time for the lawsuit of the century!

It is worth noting that there is legislation in congress to try and stop file-sharing in the US by having DNS not include file-sharing sites. This would prevent U.S. citizens from reaching file-sharing sites.

I must say too that things were better before file-sharing because being able to get music and movies free makes these things have less value and importance in people's lives. It's removing a sense of excitement over art. If you don't do file-sharing and stop your children from doing it, then you're probably doing a good thing.

If your using a wireless networks someone might be using it to download movies from the house next door U never know. If your hard wired and have the usual security measures in place then read the entire notice. If they have your ISP correct someone isn't being honest. How do I know this? I was a P2P downloader for years due to being severely disabled and unable to go to the movies like most people. I was threatened by my ISP provider but bottom line they want my $200 a month for the bundle I pay for more than they want to boot my arse. So look into and do not sweat it too much unless U get an email or hard mail from an attorney.
Peace Out-
Entire home hard wired and protected by STURM RUGER FIREARMS

If a phone that is registered to your account is used to run up long distance you are liable, if the phone company wants to insist, no matter what you say. If you are driving your car and are stopped and found to have drugs in it you will have to come up with some pretty convincing proof that it isn't yours. Despite what some posters here seem to say, if your i.s.p. has evidence from whatever source that you are doing something illegal they will try to get you to stop. They may choose to cooperate with others in doing so.

I might add that if you try to convince them it couldn't be you because of all the security you have on your network then they will be even more convinced that it is you because of all the evidence you yourself have provided.

If you tighten up your external security make sure you tighten up your internal security. All internal security measures are pointless unless you tight up administrative privileges. Otherwise anyone who can access the network even temporarily can create hard to find holes.

your network and your responsibilities. sadly this is what you will be told by your ISP.
but not all hope is lost here.
you have a right to know the 5 "Ws'" who what when where why.. to prevent this from happening again your ISP should be very cooperative in giving you times of the day what the movie was and so on. and since they are claiming the violation they are required to furnish this information to you, so you can take the appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.
search your kids computers as one person said. when the poo hits the fan kids are great liars. remember this you can NEVER completely delete anything from hard drive.
use a wired network to ALL desktop pc's these are the hardest to get into. provided the password protected sharing is ON.
use multi character passwords with more than 10 letters numbers AND symbols. here is an example of a poor password "abc123" and a good one "##121.45R@abc"
now if you have wifi stop broadcasting here is the PROPER way to set up a new wifi.
1. login to the a.p. or whatever type of device you have find the option to "stop broadcasting" AFTER that you can change the name of you "SSID" i also use "MAC" filtering and a long psa2 key.
2.NEVER let your friends or your kids friends use your wifi they are not helping you with the bill and then before you know it this happens.. also cutting the output power so it does not go past your yard and stays in house is a good idea. i run mine at 1/8
3. this is overkill but i would strongly recommend you build or seek a dedicated firewall/web filter. one such device can easily be manufactured from an old pc that is no longer being used and the software is free. such as "cler OS" this is a web filter with simple to use site blocking. or a more popular one like "pfsense" either one should be relatively effective.
4. this is the best defense of all when the house is asleep shut the wifi down for the day. saves money and wear and tear on the equipment and your doing the green thing.. after all if its off it cant be hacked right??
as for what will happen next you will most likely be fined depending on the severity of the situation or maybe just suspended for a short while. or the ISP may decide to take no further action and just watch you for a while to see if it happens again then most likely legal action will be taken.

Say Kewl!!!
How much do you want to pay me?

Show me some proof, take me to court, and then look after me the rest of my life.

Its just another case of stolen identity...............sue me and make sure it sticks, without debt, or, I will OWN YOU.
ross

What are the dangers of downloading from these sites? What is legal? Lawsuits?

To be honest with you these copyright infringment notices prove nothing - tell the company to take you to court.

In a court they actually have to provide evidence to prove that you were actually sat at the computer at the time downloading the movie.

ACS Law in the UK tried the move of just taking people's IP addresses down and threatening them with legal action, all they were hoping for was that people who didn't realise this would be that scared of the letter they'd pay up regardless of whether they were guilty or not.

ACS Law ended up in a lot of hot water after annoying hacking groups, having their network hacked and loads of names and addresses published all over the internet, they also then drew the attention of the legal ombudsman who found their actions had been totally against what the ombudsman expected, they got shut down and had their status as a professional legal team revoked.


The problem with just taking an IP address is the same as taking the licence plate of a vehicle.

An IP address can be linked to any computer on your network, if you have a wireless network it could even be linked to someone outside, a friend visiting your house, or even a complete stranger in the street.

On top of that unless you have a static IP address your IP address changes every so often, so that IP address could be used by numerous people. The ISP does have a way of tracking which account is using this IP address at specific times, but even that proves nothing.

Think of it this way - I see someone driving your vehicle down the street at a high speed, crashing into things, driving it illegally. I take the reg plate down and instantly tell the police to go and arrest you and take your licence off you for driving illegally. The police then go and do you for driving illegally without any proof that you were actually behind the wheel at the time. They ignore the fact that you'd lent your car to a friend for the weekend (or that the vehicle was stolen) and blame you because the vehicle has your licence plate on it. Now if the police actually take this to a court of law they will be laughed out of the place and told to go and get some photographic evidence that you were behind the wheel at the time the alleged incident happened (they would also probably end up being fined for wasting your time!). This is exactly the same as an IP address, but an IP address is far more easier to dupe than a reg plate on a vehicle.

...a notice of cutting off your Internet Service Providing by such provider. Just make sure nobody else does any movie downloads as of: right now.

Make sure everybody onto such household network has its own user name and account + own password for its own personal use. It is the main server PC's owner and network provider that has the immediate responsibility to enforce all security measures of this household's LAN. Wi-Fi is still, very unsafe, to use for, a household network. Set your modem-router for the server PC only. The rest of the household's LAN must be connected wirefull(cables leaving the router throuhout the rest of the house. That is to make sure, that only you accesses the outside of your house.

Otherwise, anyone can steal your 'on-the-air' live connection from just outside your home to all the way to the end of your community's block. Wi-Fi is not working like the Radio of Television. These two, very common(very primitive, also) public devices are made and designed to receive air-waves only, not to transmit such air-waves. That is why, Wi-Fi is so dangerous to your own, private, use of both your PC and, the rest of home network.

That is, also why, it is very important, to not share to anyone else, of your own system admin.'s password. Not even to your own son. Lynn, this is no longer a stand-alone PC you have there, but a whole home LAN(Local Area Network). No more switching places with the other users and, waiting your turn on the same PC(Hotseat equivalent of a social gaming platform). On a live network, many users can be using their own PC or, slave terminal, at any time these member-users, wish to use them(all at the same time, during the weekend, at some eventual time). Security is always the thing to keep in mind here. At all times, 24 hours, 7 days a week. Yes, a network is, a full-time job.

Good Luck at resetting all of your family's network parameters!

The best security i can think of (which i have) for a wireless router is as follows:
- setup the router to ONLY allow certain MAC addresses to connect. That way, even if someone does hack your wireless password, the router just won't allow them to connect.
- Turn off 'SSID Broadcasting'. With this, the router will not say "Hey guys i am here!!". Makesure to change your wireless network name (SSID).

The two above is done through your routers settings. Any trouble just ask

It sounds like you shouldn't have a wireless router, you should have it directly connected to the computer. Dynamic IP is used by different people. So, you shouldn't be responsible for other person actions if you are on a Dynamic IP. That like standing on a sidewalk & watching an accident and being help responsible for the crash. In fact, a long time a go, when I got windows xp. I got a virus, that was download things it shouldn't been downloading. I had to restore my system when that happened & this is when I was on dial-up. If I didn't come across the file by mistake, I would of never know it was there. You can force you ISP to reveal more of the complainant by the Freedom of Information Act. In fact, you have a right to know what your being accused for. There are people that don't know how to secure their system, they shouldn't be responsible for illegal downloads if they don't have the knowledge. A lot of computers at wal-mart & other stores are ready to go. The Copyright owners, if there are that picky, they should post their content online. Just my opinion.

Well Lynn, other's have given you advice on how to check/fix any security problems, but I'll relate my "story." One night after work I came home and pulled up my browser, only to find a page from my ISP telling me I'd been found to be distributing illegal SW. No other details except for a message that my acct would be canceled in FOUR HOURS if I didn't prove otherwise. Nice to hear at around 9pm. I called them and finally got some details on which files were "illegal," and there hundreds, over months and at any hour of the day/night. The emailed me a form I had to sign saying "Wasn't me. Here's what happened, signed" and I was required to FAX it back to them, with an explanation why I was innocent. I had 2 hrs left at this point.

Well, knowing the files I did a search and sure enough, there were hundreds of files in a new directory, games, apps, etc. Some more work and I found out my FTP, which I HAD enabled (since I use it,) but found that Windows XP (back then) defaulted to installing FTP with an "anoymous" logon; I never thought to check for that as I only (intentionally) set up my own user/pass login. Long story short, somebody found my IP, then used the anon login to download the files, THEN spread my IP address to various CRACKZ sites, and people from all over the world had been stealing the SW put there on my sys. I was, in effect, a "drop zone" for CRACKZ. So I cleaned up my FTP access, deleted all the files, and FAX'd the form to my ISP who held off closing my acct and I got a verification email a day later saying it was all cleared up. But THAT "freaked me out," the short time I had to resolve this, but mostly, how I'd been hacked (because of my own ignorance about default FTP settings.) So they were right, I HAD been spreading illegal SW, but of course, without my knowing. (Turns out the first login to that FTP was from someone in Sweden, FWIW.) So Lynn, you're defiantly not alone, albeit my situation seems quite different from yours.

ISP's & ISP Members/Users are being harassed and that is all there is to it. Why should a judge protect something that is abused by those that create it, free giveaways to anyone & their relationships or friends starts their cookie crumbling. Go to sites and checkout their freebies if you join - any two for free if you buy five, any three for free if you buy 10, how about this one, buy one get one free. Just how exclusive is that protection to anyone that comes around wanting to join their spam advertising they portray like some creation by FOX or how about Walt Disney, or this one Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios so if you want those shorts on the videos they are looking for hash numbers sold by anyone or available for free go ahead accuse the courts of plea bargaining air time cause there is none being aired since they can't air their advertisements in America. ISP's are not guilty of not giving air time to those typo's.

You were hacked, or you did it.
Right or wrong, legal or not, it sucks to find out the hard way that ISP's see and know every thing you do on your computers, they know every page, letter, word, site, file you download, includes movies you watch, music you listen to, pictures you look at.
From bandwidth to advertising, from you doing something illegal to protecting themselves and maybe you, they are watching.

The problem ISP's have is that a claimant representative can have as many adjusters as they would report the same issue multiple times so if there were only two they would send the ISP same info but with their signatures but they do not encrypt it or have cookies with it and is unsecure to what they boast about to their clients as being exclusive protectors of the clients materials. This can go from two up to ten or more depending on how they organize their internal operations since there are many documents regarding such disclosures required to file a court case and duplicate issues of the same matters hit the ISP's at the same time. Hatred builds and state representatives also begin receiving documentation that some professional's are spamming the evidence they claim is Infringement. Each one claims issue to settle the case and a ISP has no jurisdiction in the state they are in which means their actions are illegitimately assembled spam of no value whatsoever in violation of the ISP member's rights to understand what it is that is the issue and decide if that issue was of such value or something considered as trash as some people refer to issues being discussed, meanwhile virus situations are the point at which ISP's are majorly concerned and this being the end result of email spamming documents derives nothing but a trash issue. How can a ISP avoid the slamming of documents in multitude of the same issue? It becomes another issue if the BBB becomes involved or another issue when corruption is detected and the members can block illegal access to their computers. The ISP stays their ground highly respected for reporting one issue of spam and one issue of corruption and many issues of illegal computer access. The game they are playing is not legal according to California. When any business forces a individual to do something they are against entirely it violates those rights. It don't matter if they have pictures on a site depicting what is in a movie or not if the individual don't like advertising it is their right to reject it and also their right to inspect whatever they want to, the outcome depends on the individuals rights to accept or deny products and allegations relative to descriptive's that turned out to be false in they views of what the product was advertised as being. Right & Wrong does not rest with a court it rests only if there was no annoyances encountered, you would refuse a product too if you became annoyed at what someone keeps telling you over and over again and again like it was a religious Sunday thing but instead every three days, instead of one time a week. Setup using inside membership or even hackers to determine hash numbers son't impress me any, they did not download the entire file they obtained a segment and their program read a hash number off it and they reported what they learned to whom they are hired by - THAT IS THE ILLEGALITY, someone that downloaded the issue also has the same segment they got to report it and nothing else to analyze until their viewing of the issue continues which could take a very long time as their computer usage could only be a couple hours each day. Viewing is not a Infringement, Downloading is not a Infringement, and trashing downloads is not a Infringement. So what the issue boils down in the end is actually SPAM & ANNOYANCES to ISP's and members of ISP's. WE WANT IT TO STOP. INTERNET IS A FREE SERVICE THAT ISP's PROVIDE FOR CONNECTIVITY TO MEMBERS THAT DO NOT WANT TO BE ANNOYED (The members pay for this service from ISP's). Can you agree to those terms that ISP's respect? ISP's do not PHISH their customer's.

When a Group of cons manage a Infringement Copyright Law Group for clients they are hiring X-Prostitutes X-Law Breakers to run computers to seek out who is downloading & who are members does not matter. They are violating the rights of Free Enterprise themselves, slamming ISP's hoping to get a break of someone selling matters they hold hash numbers on which are not part of their clients sales routines. When you walk into a store to buy a CD there is no hash number displayed. ISP's are not buying hash numbers neither is it a requirement that ISP's have to make their members buy hash numbers. Digitized data is a JOKE, a CD quality is limited to five or ten years at the most because makers of the bulk CD used to make many movies are low quality, go to a rental CD business and you will see just what I am referring to, check the scratched content for less than $2, clearances place the same hash numbers up for sale at ridiculously low prices, same ones found in searches on Google being sold or downloadable for free. How is it a Producer gets to choose whether a shooting goes to their so called CD movie product and no one else is allowed to decide whether they want that CD or not by how they are advertising it to you and spamming ISP's?

It is of no value for a ISP to spy on people they hope to do business with everyday of the year, their policy requires installation costs, a satellite company can show you how to install and they do not have to install anything for you but the big difference is that a satellite company will only allow you to participate with them one time and no more while a cable company will not care if you disconnect a number of times a year and reconnect, they have understanding but not a satellite company. See what satellite companies thinks about all those documents coming in to them from all of the Infringement Copyright Law Group's for client's in America, is that the real issue here or the overcrowding of courts on trivia and jails that must feed people paid for with state tax money. We should just start a new one called "Annoyance Infringement Law Group" for clients and protect every member of ISP's whether they are satellite or they are cable, now what happened to telephone connections cause I removed my modem and don't want a spammer to invade my computer to get access to my modem or home phone number service and how is it that you distinguish a ISP as being AT&T/BELLSOUTH or other telephone service provider that has digital quality lines available to connect a computer to? The exact same way and then it is called ILLEGAL PHONE HACKING WHEN A GROUP ATTACKS USERS AT THEIR HOMES, IT IS CALLED SLAMMING, IT IS CALLED ILLEGAL WIRE TAPPING LIKE WIKILEAKS DEFINES TO THE WORLD AGAINST THOSE WHOM PARTICIPATE IN ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES THEY WISH THE WORLD TO KNOW ABOUT.

Here is one for the road, we once had a Lowe's Credit Card, it was a old card, found to have had its account closed back in 2001 but it was a joint account. When we called to reactivate it Lowe's representative kept asking to speak with the other card holder, same number both cards and when he got on the phone he specifically answered "Why For", "I do not want a Credit Card", "I did not make this phone call", "Is that all" then handed phone to the other member. This still didn't settle in the mind of the representative that a joint member was refusing the Credit Ratings they occupy in banks for joint accounts and only one other prior member was interested in the account and kept on asking to speak with the member that don't want a Credit Card to get some information from them (are they phishing). It went on for about 45 minutes looking for numbers and answering the same questions (nothing changed since prior activation before the card expired and the account was paid in full and closed properly)that we finally got tired and decided to leave home and hung up the phone. Now isn't that annoying enough to tell you the people that are suppose to know how to respond are not responding appropriately even if it were not Hispanic it still meant specifically what we stated, The member that wanted the Credit Card Renewed did not desire to talk on the phone, could not see well enough to read the number on the Credit card and would not want to go shopping unless they were with someone that was going to make decisions and they could agree or disagree. How Idiotic is that, that is live in a bottle. We decided Lowe's was not who we want to deal with anymore after this discussion. Thank you.