UK-Based Anti-Piracy Portal Flagged For Malware & Phishing Activity

• An anti-piracy portal backed by the UK government has been flagged as unsafe due to malware and phishing.
• At the same time, the UK-based ISPs are sending out copyright infringement notices, asking users not to visit the malware-infected website.
• It is recommended to avoid the domain until a resolution has been offered by the site owners.

UK ISPs recently began sending out notices to users who are being flagged by their ISPs for sharing copyright-infringing content. The warning notices are sent out by multiple UK ISPs including British Telecom, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky and others which redirect users to GetitRightFromaGenuineSite.org. While the notices are purely educational and do not contain any threats of a legal action, users who visited the website revealed that the “Get it Right From A Genuine Site” contains malware and phishing software.

Multiple antivirus vendors and third parties like Twitter have also warned users about the site, recommending them not to visit the domain until the issue is resolved. While the move by the UK ISPs is a welcome change from the aggressive steps taken by the media industry against piracy, it is still a careless move to allow such dangerous software on a government-backed domain. Aside from antivirus vendors, Twitter is also flagging the website as dangerous with a warning that the site can potentially 'steal your password or other personal information' or install 'malicious software programs on your computer.'

The malware infection was downplayed by the website owners as a technical glitch and that it should have been resolved back in April, but so far, no steps have been taken. Many antivirus programs are marking the website as safe, but antivirus programs like AVG and Avast have marked the malware threat as serious. It is unknown if it is really a technical glitch as the website owners have claimed in the past, or if the website is infected. The malware warnings are visible on both the 'HTTP' and 'HTTPS' versions of the website which makes the domain’s claims of it being a technical glitch sound untrue.

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