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How to Spot Pirate IPTV

How to Spot Pirate IPTV

Here's How to Spot (and Avoid) Pirate IPTV

July 13, 2021

As cord-cutting becomes the norm (as we discussed last week), a recurring problem underpinning the market will continue to rear its ugly head: IPTV piracy. Many new cord-cutters are lured in by too-go-to-be-true low prices by private IPTV services, without realizing what going prices are in the market. That can put new cord-cutters at the risk of serious consequences.This week, we'll cover how to spot a pirate IPTV service.

Streamer's Spotlight: How to Spot and Avoid Pirate IPTV

Media piracy is certainly nothing new. But with the rise of cord-cutting and streaming TV, pirates have found significant inroads. Armed with legitimate-looking ads on social media, reasonably well-designed websites, and paid promoters on YouTube, many pirate IPTV providers have been able to rake in millions of dollars.

Back in 2017, we were one of the first to expose one of the biggest pirate IPTV providers,

Set TV

. Following our report, Set TV eventually closed down and its owner was

ordered to pay $7.65 million

in damages to rights holders.

Still, Set TV was around for a few years, and it had thousands of customers, many of whom assumed that it was a legitimate provider. It shouldn't have taken long to determine Set TV was a scam, but for the uninitiated, here are some signs that a cord-cutting service isn't the real deal.

1. The Price Per Channel Is Too Low

Low prices exist in the cord-cutting market, to be sure.

Sling TV

still costs $35 per month, and

Philo is just $20

per month. But one needs to pay attention to the number of channels, and the type of channels offered for those prices. Sling TV's $35 packages carry around 30-40 channels, with a mixture of sports, entertainment, news, and local broadcast networks. And Philo's $20 package may have nearly 70 channels, but they're all entertainment networks that are much cheaper to offer (no sports, no local broadcast networks).

On the flip side, many pirate IPTV services hundreds of thousands of channels for less than $30 per month, including major sports networks. ESPN alone costs as much as $6 per customer (or more). So an IPTV service promising hundreds of channels that include sports packages for a cost less than the more well-known providers is highly suspicious.

2. No Dedicated App

Outside of price, this is a bit warning sign. If the provider has no dedicated app for major operating systems and devices, it's probably not legitimate.

Yes, major services will get into fights with different device makers. Google's beef with Amazon kept the YouTube TV app off Fire TV devices for years, while Philo took years to finally create an Android app. But a total lack of dedicated apps for

any

major device or operating system should give you pause.

3. The Service Uses a "Reseller" Program

"Resellers" are those who buy accounts wholesale from IPTV providers and then resell them for a profit. Many IPTV providers only sell their services through resellers, while some use resellers as a way to get others to market for them. It's not unlike a pyramid scheme in some ways, though resellers can and do make money.

It's also a clear sign of a pirate IPTV service. Legit providers, like

Hulu

, Philo,

AT&T TV

, et. al., may use affiliate programs, but they don't do wholesale selling of accounts for reselling.

Those are only three signals you could use to identify pirate IPTV. There are many more.

Read here

for more examples.