TORONTO – The Motion Picture Association of Canada has published a study which shows a growing number of Canadians are visiting illegal streaming sites and exposing themselves to cyber attacks.
The report, 2019 Movie & TV Piracy Trends in Canada, says 26% of Canadians consumed pirated content during a three-month period in 2018 and that there were a total of 2.6 billion visits to pirate content sites by Canadians in 2018.
Also, 74% of Canadians visits to sites used for piracy are to non peer-to-peer sites but are instead mostly to illegal streamers.
While the economic impact to legitimate outlets is quantifiable (the MPAC estimates a 14-15% increase in domestic box office if piracy could be eliminated just from the theatrical window), a huge problem exists from malware, spyware and other malicious online threats which infect Canadians devices when they visit certain illegal streaming sites.
The report says 25% of pirate content sites studied by RiskIQ for MPAC exposed users to malicious content and “46% of the malicious content… is phishing, where fake sites defraud users to log their user name and password information, often redirecting users to legitimate websites afterwards,” meaning it’s hard for a user to tell when they’re being tricked and hacked.
