Warning email from Amazon

[Stan001]

I got one of those emails from amazon.co.uk. But I'm not in the UK...

That should tell you something there. Why would amazon.co.uk send an email if you don't use Amazon.co.uk?

And if you have a decent email provider, you can see in details where the email really comes from, as even stated in the email, it should be sent from amazon.co.uk.

The one thing that disturbs me is, what is the point of sending out these false warnings? Is there a link to click? Does it then maybe take you to a fake Amazon site?

Other than that, what do they get out of sending fake warnings unless people are then contacting Amazon directly, and then that is putting them on a list of people to watch by Amazon.

If it is real, I know many still have not got it, but they may be sending them in batches.

Also, as Germania pointed out, any email I do get from Amazon it has my name, and if not, some other identifying info.

[Germania]

I got one of those emails from amazon.co.uk. But I'm not in the UK...

"Hello" - without a personal salutation ?

"Account Specialist" ??

=> Complete Fake

[hottif]

I got one of those emails from amazon.co.uk. But I'm not in the UK...



I don't know if I have to worry, but I reduced downloading to kind if a normal behaviour.
And I cancelled some of my channel subscriptions.

[0xFeedBeef]

I have an Android box that has an option to set a crazy prefetch number in the buffering settings. In essence, it it possible to prefetch the entire show before actually watching it. If the prefetch is high enough and the file size of the program small enough, it often times doesn't count as "watched."

<snip>

I very much suspect it has to do with revenue deprivation that would be out of the ordinary "conduct," so things like buy/rent then download then "cancel" the purchase/lease, or sub to a channel (non trial period) then download then cancel the sub for a refund.

From the purely pragmatic perspective, if I were running this kind of anomaly detection system, I'd not care if people downloaded things once-off (after all, people tend to watch the same cr*p over and over, and in the long run it actually saves on bandwidth), and only flag things that are taking the Michael when it comes to depriving of revenue; but that's me being pragmatic

[jpp72]

As many of you know, i download a ton from Amazon US and Canada.



I do 100 episodes a day on a regular basis. If this is a thing, I'll be the first one to get an email...

I'll post if/when I get the email...

P.S. If they do threaten to ban me, it's their loss... I sub to 12 channels in Canada and 5 in the US. I also order more than most since i get packages delivered every single week and sometimes multiple days a week.

The "Take my money" Futurama meme should feature me and not Philip

[simchris]

Since none of us has received one yet, the whole thing is actually uninteresting.

This

[Sebastian001]

Since none of us has received one yet, the whole thing is actually uninteresting.

[Stan001]

I was, at first, a bit concerned. But I know I myself don't use the 100 downloads per day anymore on Amazon.
I am not going to change what I do or don't download. From what's said, you get the warning email before they do anything, and if it did get to that point I get a warning, then I will become more concerned. I just know Amazon is one of the most used, again because of offering subscriptions to many other providers like Paramount+ and many more.
I don't even see myself having money to buy subscriptions to many other providers. It's all I can do to be part of Prime, and initially it was for the free and sometime faster shipping.
I then took an interest in the movies and shows. They took my interest away from watching on a streaming device due to their stupid additional charge to remove ads when initially there were never ads.
They may find that some people would stop downloading if they removed the ads. But it seems most providers feel they need that extra money, and we all know Amazon surely is not in need of the extra money.
I sadly have to deal with ads on Peacock unless I use streamfab to download, the Netflix I have access to is the ad-free version.
So, if/when I stream, the first provider I go to is Netflix because of no ads. When I did watch Peacock, the ads did not seem like there were a huge amount, like if you watch the movie from a standard TV channel. As well as most standard channels, edit/cut the movies to fit to certain so-called time restraints, etc. You're even better watching on Tubi or Pluto, etc., as they don't seem to edit/cut the movies, although some have more ads than it would seem they need. I liked Nosey app when I first heard of it, as I was a fan of certain shows they had. Nosey had its times, there were ads like almost every 10 minutes, if not more. Nosey has expanded and has even more stuff. Finally, they seemed to have cut back on ads. And there were 1 or 2 ways to download, even from Nosey (with no ads). And they seem to have put more on YouTube, and SF can download, than from YouTube.

For those concerned or really received these notices, and if they are real, all you can do is take breaks. Everyone thinks they need to download terabytes of programs and movies in as short of time as possible, and many providers keep stuff for months before it goes away. And yes, also if it's real, it will just make more turn to torrents and other means and skip SF altogether. Look in the right places, and you can most likely get at least 96% to 98% via other means.(Sadly, I don't see the Netflix 4K as much as I used to, but there was a time they were available) I still try to stay away from torrents as much as possible, even though I have access to VPN's because in the US, they snag you fast for torrenting popular movies or TV shows.

And YES Amazon lets you download with their app, there is even an app in Microsoft's Store on Windows 11, but it saves it, of course encrypted, I surely hope they are not focusing on those people who do it that way. I never tried from the website to the computer.

And you probably guessed I am not a fan of many ads or commercials. When watching TV shows on cable, I use their DVR to record and can then skip past the commercials.

[MrGrackle]

A few quick thoughts- AWS "knows" when you request each title, if you have the regular account (with ads) it might be triggering no ads watched tripwire, also, they might have a trigger to see if you "got the title" but Amazon's player doesn't register the title as "watched"

The short of it is: it's naïve to assume that someone at amazon hasn't worked out what the difference between genuine player and what SF does (even just going off the ads, recall it's an avenue stream that SF deprives of the corporation that's posting billions in net profit)

I have an Android box that has an option to set a crazy prefetch number in the buffering settings. In essence, it it possible to prefetch the entire show before actually watching it. If the prefetch is high enough and the file size of the program small enough, it often times doesn't count as "watched."

As I recall though, Disney+ was detecting something at one point and temp banning IPs.

If this truly is happening, what it could mean is a different method to obtain the content. To actually send it through a 'player' but then do what the program normally does with the raw data. So a 45 minute program would take, 45+ minutes to download.

Even on a set top player, you can fast forward the show to the end and get credit for watching it. There are always other methods.

And they do have an actual "download" button on a lot of content on their site too --- what would it take to decode that downloaded content?


Keep in mind other streamers use AWS to host their data as well. So one has got to wonder what triggered such a thing.

Without seeing the full message, it could be a phishing attempt. I get them all the time (from "Netflix") on my cell phone. Nowhere in the messages do they state who I am, very generic. And the tinyurl you would click on says netflx, conveniently missing the "i".

[october262]

Over on the Discord, any discussion on download habits? For example, people that got warned/banned were doing X, while people who didn't get anything did X?

no mention of download habbits, amazon knows what accounts are being used to download stuff.

[MrMayor]

it's being talked about over here on discord, their banning accounts of people that rip stuff from Amazon.

Over on the Discord, any discussion on download habits? For example, people that got warned/banned were doing X, while people who didn't get anything did X?

[Sebastian001]

Who says the email is really from Amazon? I get emails every day from banks, insurance companies, and parcel services. They all tell me to do something, otherwise this will happen... It's all a rip-off.

Once a year, I get an email from RTL+ with statistics on what I've watched most. It never includes anything I've downloaded, so they don't see it at all.

I don't know if Amazon sees it...

[october262]

Over on the Discord, any discussion on download habits? For example, people that got warned/banned were doing X, while people who didn't get anything did X?

doesn't really say what they were doing, althougth one thread mentions being detected during the license request.

[MrMayor]

it's being talked about over here on discord, their banning accounts of people that rip stuff from Amazon.

Over on the Discord, any discussion on download habits? For example, people that got warned/banned were doing X, while people who didn't get anything did X?

[simchris]

I think some common sense would come into play too, if the VPN use itself is not the trigger. If all you do is rip, and never actually watch shows on your Prime Video account, that would trigger me if it were my service. I try to watch shows on my Prime account quite a bit via my Apple TV and I have the full upgraded Prime subscription, as well as couple of addon channels. Sorry if that was 'captain obvious' comment, but I'm actually in midst of downloading some stuff for my new movie box in living room, some to replace ancient dvd isos of discs I purchased, as my movie box gets confused by mult-disc sets per season, so the ripped versions (e.g., Invader Zim, etc.) is way more practical. Keeping eye on this topic since top of mind. Kinda been going nuts on Amazon downloads as it was a way to get many of my Apple legit purchases as downloads for my new movie box which cannot use the Apple 'app' at all.