ISPs begin fighting IP lookup requests in wake of data leak

“UK Internet providers have now banded together to challenge
anti-P2P law firms who try to turn thousands of IP addresses into
customer names—and a London court will hear their objections
to the entire process.

“The ISPs were burned last month when a massive e-mail leak from
the top anti-P2P firm in the UK, ACS Law, exposed their own
spreadsheets of customer names matched to the pornographic films
they allegedly downloaded. The revelation of this embarrassing (and
unproven) behavior was compounded by the fact that several of the
ISPs were taking no security precautions, instead e-mailing their
Excel spreadsheets unencrypted and without passwords.

“PlusNet’s Chief Operation Officer Richard Fletcher apologized
last week to customers. “We are investigating how we came to be
sending unencrypted data as we have robust systems for managing
data,” he said. But the blame, in his view, lies largely elsewhere:
“We are extremely angry with ACS Law for allowing this to
happen.”

Complete Story