A complicated phishing scam is targeting illegal downloaders of Game of Thrones, along with other copyrighted video content by fooling ISPs with fake violation notices. The ISPs then forward the notices to their customers, along with settlement offers, which, if paid, are pocketed by the scammers.
The phishing scam was first reported last month when a Cox Cable subscriber received a notice forwarded directly to them by Cox, purporting to be issued by IP-Echelon, the tracker that enforces the copyright claims of rights holders such as Lionsgate and HBO. The notice indicated that the customer illegally downloaded a copy of the Lionsgate movie Allegiant via a torrent stream and threatened legal action if the user did not settle.
The user contacted Cox, which insisted that the notice was valid and had been vetted by the company's security team, despite the fact that the subscriber insisted she had never downloaded the movie in question. It soon became clear that this was in fact an elaborate phishing scam. The scheme was particularly clever in that the supposed validity of the notice was reinforced by the fact that it was officially sent to the subscriber from an official Cox email address.
Now, it appears that the scam is much more widespread than originally anticipated. The notices are targeting ISPs worldwide, not just in the U.S., with incidents being reported in Europe and as far away as Australia. The scammers are targeting illegal downloaders of Game of Thrones in particular, and posing again as IP-Echelon, but this time, on behalf of another one of its clients, HBO.
The notices claim to have detected an illegal Game of Thrones download by the user and direct the subscriber to a website at which they can pay a settlement to avoid further action.
"You have 72 hours to access the settlement offer and settle online. If you fail to settle, the claim(s) will be referred to our attorneys for legal action. At that point the original settlement offer will no longer be an option and the amount will increase as a result of us having to involve our attorneys," the notice reads.
Game of Thrones is the most illegally-downloaded show in history. The 2015 season finale resulted in the largest amount of torrent activity ever for a single piece of content, while the 2016 finale registered a close second to that record. It's possible that the phishing scammers are targeting real downloaders of the show taken from information retrieved from actual torrent streams, but if they are just targeting random users, Game of Thrones is the perfect ploy due to its popularity.
HBO was so troubled by illegal downloading of the show in past seasons that it took unprecedented steps to prevent it this year, including notices just like the fake ones now being sent to internet users in this scam.
