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Got an email saying I illegally downloaded a movie Friday night

13K views 10 replies 8 participants last post by  doug_scott  
#1 ·
Just got an email from Bell saying that Warner Bros asked them to tell me to get rid of a supposedly movie I have downloaded through Torrent Red , whatever that is, on Friday night.

The IP listed is not even close to mine today (unless it changed lately). Mine today starts with 47.XX.XX.XXX whereas the listed IP is 65.94.175.177.

Does anyone know what this is all about? Of course in the email , Bell says to contact Warner Bro for any questions. As if Joe Blow here would be able to get an answer when nothing adds up.

1. I don't use torrent
2. Wrong IP address
3. Never went near any computer on Friday
4. If I was going to download a movie, I wouldn't get a translated movie


It through me for a loop until I checked all the evidence they were exhibiting.

Really don't like to be accused of something I have no control over as in ROTATING IP addresses. "CENSORED" you Bell and Warner for shooting the first salvo in my direction. I'll be sending an email a day until I bug them long enough. Not a happy camper.

I know I didn't do anything wrong but like I always tell people, that's how rumors starts. A-holes.
 
#3 ·
#4 ·
A number of years ago I got the same about illegal downloads from Telus. Microsoft accused a certain IP and Telus contacted me. I looked at the Ip and didn't understand. Why me? I looked at my internet usage and was nowhere near what they were accusing me of doing AND I owned legal copies of the software. I blasted Telus and they did not even have the courtesy to apologizr for getting my blood pressure up. I was seriously disturbed by that email and having had quintuple bypass don't need those aggravations but they did not give a damn.
I can't really describe here how I felt towards Telus and Microsoft. Let's just say my opinion has not improved about either.
Relax and try to forget about it. The honest people are being warned and the crooks are getting away with stuff.
 
#5 ·
@Danster DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES CONTACT Warner Bros (more likely a copyright troll acting in their name.)

All they have right now is an IP address. If you contact them, they will have your email address and possibly your name and they might start harassing you directly.

I checked the IP address of your posts on this forum and you've had the same IP address since at least Nov.12, 2017. Prior to that it was 156.XXX.XXX.XXX.

Obviously there is an error in Bell's records (unless you have more than 1 account.)

You can contact Bell to remove that allegation from their records, just on the remote possibility that the names get subpoenaed.
 
#6 ·
Not only is it a Bell vs a BellAliant address, but it's associated with a DSL user as opposed to a Fibre user.

I would just move on and ignore it. You could try calling the helpdesk but the odds of getting someone there who could explain what happened are just slightly less than your chances of hitting the lotto this week. If you happen to get someone who understands that notification system, I'm pretty sure they'll just tell you to ignore it as well. :)
 
#7 ·
So I guess I will just let it slide. Thanks for all your responses, people. It did make my blood boil as I try to be as clean as possible and play by the rules. It aggravates me when mistakes that are serious like this, happens.

Just for the heck of it, let's say one person downloads from IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx for a few weeks then all of a sudden, the IP changes and I end up having that same IP, how would they be able to know if I was or wasn't the guilty party? Can it happen? I don't trust anything anymore as we advance (or go back depending how you look at it) in technology. It seems like to many programs are out to sniff out our privacy. Facebook anyone? LOL
 
#8 ·
I'll answer from what I've 'heard'. Please don't take it to be hard fact :)

The system that sends these reports receives data on a very regular basis about who has what IP - similar to what you'd do if you were dealing with a usage-based billing system like they have outside of Atlantic Canada. They know to the second how long an individual has had an IP so when they get a complaint, they can look in the time window of the complaint and cross reference who had it at that specific time. Those submitting complaints should be doing so in a standardized format but there are likely thousands of submissions each day so the odds of them all being submitted correctly are slim to none.

In those times where a complainant submits something that is not accurate from a time perspective it's possible to get the wrong person when the system does an automated lookup. Given that these notices are easily ignored it's not such a huge deal: If the alleged copyright holder proceeds to court, and a warrant was issued, a very real person would become involved and manually track down the IP and the associated owner.

In the case above, however, it seems very odd that the system managed to get something so wrong. You never had that IP so it's not a case of inaccurate time submission. Maybe someone could dig into it at Bell but like I said, I can't imagine the helpdesk would have any idea who that'd be.
 
#11 ·
Couple of ideas, first view the headers of the email and see if the source network is one you would expect, being from Bell for example. Sometimes simply hitting reply will show you the email address of the mailbox the scammer is monitoring for questions from the accused. It won't be a bell address.

You could also right click the link they gave for you to use to contact WB. It will give you the actual URL to the cloned WB site if it is a scam. To validate it simply take the domain name and get the owners name using WHOIS. To me it sounds like a scam.

You are running a secure WiFi network aren't you?