ACS:Law Release private details of some Plusnet Customers

[DaBees-Knees]

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/plusnet/3906386-acslaw-release-private-details-of-some-plusnet-customers.html

ACS:Law are a law firm who have been using questionable, yet legal, techniques to force (if uncontested) ISP's to release the details of customers who ACS:Law believe have infringed copyright online. They do this by using the ISP to identify the owner of the IP address which was used to download the alleged copyrighted material. Plusnet have complied with all such requests in the past despite a long compaign by some of their customers that they contest such actions by ACS:Law. Thus far they have not done so.

This of course is a decision for Plusnet, and their owners BT, to make however in the last week ACS:Law's website came under attack by 4chan, a group who have attacked several organisations involved in "protecting against" copyright infringement. This action took ACS:Law's website down for several hours. When it came back up again it came up with a backup copy which allowed directory listings. Contained within this was passwords including those to email. Anonymous, who was visiting their site spotted their error and used, or abused, the security flaw within this site and downloaded all their emails. This was then posted on the internet by P2P.

As Plusnet have been cooperating with ACS:Law in supplying the personal details of Plusnet customers this email contained spreadsheets of those customers including all material they were alleged to have downloaded and their name and address. Given the questionable nature of using IP as a means of identifying offenders this will cause a lot of distress to Plusnet customers whose information is now in the public domain and their name associated with material which they have not, nor never would, download and even if they did download it is not for any organisation, other than court, to release that information.

Plusnet today issued a statement on the forums about how it intends to deal with this serious breach of its customers data.

We are going to flag every account we have disclosed to ACS:Law with a note in Workplace (Our internal CRM) so advisors are aware if anyone calls in. This should be complete in around an hour. We are also arranging to place a ticket on accounts and send an email. I'll confirm when we are going to send later today. We will look to send a letter to customers as well.

Richard Fletcher, Plusnet Chief Operating Officer

On 20 August 2010 over 700 lines of names of addresses (though one section contained a lot of duplicates) over 2 spreadsheets were disclosed ACS:Law. Earlier requests for information were also given therefore there are likely to be thousands of customers affected.

Please be aware that if you have children or any other people in your house other than yourself, or leave your internet connection unsecured then don't assume that you are not on the list. That leaves aside the question of the robustness of WEP, WPA, WPA2 security which all leave your connection vulnerable hence the reason for the campaign against ACS:Law and against Plusnet for supplying this information in the first place.

As you will see from the quote above at the minute, other than obtaining the full email download, the only way you can find if your details were passed to ACS:Law is to phone the customer service centre as the web portal has yet to be set with a note for all affected customers. Further updates will no doubt be given on the Plusnet thread linked above.

"There are likely to be thousands of customers affected"

Additional reading -
http://www.sky.com/helpcentre/latest-news/
https://www.plus.net/support/acslaw.shtml

It should be noted that neither ISP bothered to contest the application by ACS Law in court. They just handed the information over. As you will see, the implications can be severe.  

[GhostShip]

Its of course no coincidence that SKY are part of a big media conglomerate and thus care less as to ensuring their customers details are given out for valid reason as opposed to frivolous claims and  zero evidence, thanks for nothing sky you guys s**k