Football fans are running the “extremely dangerous” risk of putting their devices and personal privacy in jeopardy through accessing free streams of games, according to a new report into such services authored by researchers from Belgian university KU Leuven and New York-based counterpart Stony Brook University.
The study says that the most popular free live streaming platforms are attracting upwards of eight million visits per month with a reliance on malicious advertising to make a profit.
Of the thousands of streams studied, the researchers said that as many as half planted malicious software on the users’ machine through forced ads and other deceptive techniques. As well as pop-up and overlay advertising, the report also highlights an increase in sites demanding users install browser plug-ins in order to watch a free stream.
“(To watch the stream) you have to install the extension, and once the user installs the extension, it can infect any website the user is visiting,” lead researcher Zubair Rafique told UK public-service broadcaster the BBC.
“So, if a person installs an extension to watch a stream, and then visits a site like BBC.com, this extension can actually change the contents of BBC.com as it appears in the user's browser so that it includes malicious links and advertising. This is extremely dangerous.”
The study analysed over 5,000 aggregator domains – platforms which collate free streams for visitors to browse and watch. In addition to the aggregation sites, it also looked at the networks of media providers from which the content is collated.
“We discovered that nearly 25 per cent of live streams originate from the servers hosted in Belize,” the study said. “More than 60 per cent of analysed streams originate from the media servers provided by only five companies located in Belize, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada.
“Additionally, we found that more than 64 per cent of parties providing these streams have been reported at least once for violating the copyrights of content owners. Since only a handful of channel providers are responsible for broadcasting the majority of the live streams, we argue that a strict control on the operations of these entities, can effectively minimise the volume of illegal live streaming.”