Illegal, unsafe Kodi boxes seized UK

A man has been arrested in the UK and the 40 Kodi boxes he planned to sell have been seized in West London.

News has reached us that a 53-year-old man has been arrested in connection to some dodgy streaming devices.

His 40 Android-powered boxes that were preloaded with Kodi and other software have been seized, Westminster Council has said.

A raid took place at a property in London’s W2 district on July 12th. The man and his boxes were taken away by police.

His boxes were being sold online for less than £100.

Crack down

This is not only the result of a recent crackdown on devices that are able to stream pirated content though.

The investigation has shown that the boxes were also found not to be safe to use on UK mains power.

These and similar cheap-to-buy imported boxes are simply not built to current (pun intended) EU and UK safety standards.

In this case, a two-pin power supply was included with the boxes.

The law requires that electrical items sold in the UK must include a UK mains plug.

It is possible to use adapters on such plugs, but this lacks the guaranteed safety of a properly designed UK mains plug.

Legalities

It is not against the law to use Kodi, but it becomes illegal when people use add-ons to watch sports, movies or any content that generally needs to be paid for.

It is also illegal to sell the boxes fully loaded with software that allows such piracy.

Following a recent European Court ruling, which deemed the boxes to be illegal, over 200 distributors of the gadget have stopped selling them.

Other risks

Donning my tin-foil hat for a moment, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that dodgy Kodi boxes could also be loaded with malware.

What better way to get on to someone’s network than the victim plugging you in themselves? As these Android-powered devices need network access, any ne’er-do-well could easily piggyback on to your network. That way they’d have access to connected cameras, phones, computers, etc. Or, simply run a bot from your network without you realising.

As with most things. Better safe than sorry.

Best practice

The same rules apply with most consumer electronics, buy from a reputable source. Auction sites can’t always be trusted.

If you decide to take the risk of buying a box from that bloke down at the local, at least use a decent power adapter.

However, that won’t protect your network. But, at least you won’t get eletrocuted or your home set fire.

Also, if you choose to watch streamed content illegally, then you should be fully aware of the risks associated with that.