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Fake warning letter spooks some file-sharers away from piracy

By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 11 September 2015

A number of prolific file-sharers who regularly uploaded unlicensed content so that others could nab it from sites like ExtraTorrent and KickassTorrents reportedly downed tools earlier this week after being freaked out by a warning email from Warner Music’s legal department, which said they had been caught infringing copyright and risked legal action if they didn’t cease and desist with immediate effect.

So, job done Warner legal. Except Torrentfreak has noted that the warning email is almost certainly a fake. For starters it has a number of grammatical errors, and even Warner Music’s lawyers know that it’s ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’. Meanwhile the full email headers reveal that the message did not actually come from a Warner email address. And finally, the correspondence claims that the file-sharers’ internet service providers had shopped them to the record company, but no ISP would do that, net firms arguing that doing so would violate data protection laws.

Though that does raise the interesting question of how exactly the faker got the contact details of several prolific file-sharers, a query that has got some people worried, especially as Kickass recently warned users about possible phishing attempts to get their contact information. Because, given the fake letter did seem to actually stop some pesky file-sharers, you wonder whether the actual legal departments at major music companies might wonder if they can get their hands on those email addresses too, now that they seem to be doing the rounds.

You can read the scam email and spot the grammar errors in it on Torrentfreak here, if you so wish.