Accused of watching BBC iPlayer without a TV licence

Nantaeronen

Thanks for everyone's suggestions. I did ask them what programmes I am supposed to have watched, when, and on what device. They said that someone had used my email address to log in to iPlayer,as has been suggested above. However they have accepted my assertion that I have not watched iPlayer, and have reinstated my no Licence Needed declaration. I used to have a TV that broke down in 2020 and have not replaced it, and find I can do without. But I did sometimes use BBC iPlayer before then - not often because in rural North Wales the broadband reception was incredibly slow - and I thought it impossible to use it now without a licence from my memory of logging in. But it does rather seem that they were trying it on,hoping to catch someone out, especially after the Olympics which they perhaps expect a lot of people to want to watch.

The letter I got was exactly the same as the one in powerful_Rogue's video, so it is obviously a standard letter.

Cornucopia

It's good that you managed to sort it out with them.  

I should say that a "No Licence Needed declaration" is something of a figment of their imagination, and its revocation doubly so.  

There is no requirement in law for anyone to "declare" that they do not need a TV Licence, any more than it is necessary to declare that there is no need for a Fishing Licence.   There is no legislation around the supposed declaration, and it has limited legal standing overall.  

Personally, I wouldn't bother filling in the No Licence Needed form for several reasons:   1) TVL do not presently know my name because I moved to this address and was Legally Licence Free from the outset,  2) TVL have stated that anyone accused of Licence evasion will be treated more harshly if they have previously filled in the NLN form than if they haven't.

That last point is further evidence of the crazed mania that is TV licence enforcement in the UK, and I do not personally intend to involve myself in it any more than is absolutely necessary, which is not very much.

FreeBear

Cornucopia said: Personally, I wouldn't bother filling in the No Licence Needed form for several reasons:   1) TVL do not presently know my name because I moved to this address and was Legally Licence Free from the outset,  2) TVL have stated that anyone accused of Licence evasion will be treated more harshly if they have previously filled in the NLN form than if they haven't.

Never bothered with a NLN either. Without a name, they can't (attempt to) prosecute. It also renders their threat-o-grams worthless and easy to spot amongst the rest of the junk mail (the return address also gives it away).

wild666

It's a phishing expedition by TVL just bin the letter. If you have a NLR declaration running they might cancel the declaration and you will receive letters every month but it's most likely it won't be cancelled.
Most households use a dynamic range for their IP address and every so often the IP address changes, in the 6 years with my ISP I think the IP address has changed about 10 times or more after the router has done an update.

booneruk

Cornucopia said:

Hoenir said:

Cornucopia said:

I wouldn't get overly concerned about Youtube, Wifi leakage or IP addresses - those have nothing to do with these emails/letters.

An IP address is registered to an actual postal address in some way. 

IP addresses are typically temporary, and also the BBC would need a court order to obtain the information from an ISP.

They can be 'dynamic' and change each time your router reboots, 'sticky', in that your ISP can allocate you the same one for an indeterminate period of time independent of router rebooting, or they can be 'static' where they never change - but this would be extremely rare unless it was something you were paying for.

I'd be very worried if the BBC was trying to link IP address to users and hounding them for licensing reasons. It's just not reliable.