Watching BBC i-player away from home without a licence

nsr240

I have just had an email from TV Licensing stating that I have watched BBC i-player with the warning "As your No Licence Needed status is now invalid, you will need to buy a TV Licence." I do not have a licence for my property and have previously let them know this. I know the regulations regarding watching i-player. I used my laptop to access i-player once at my brother's property, which DOES have a licence. Can anyone please advise me whether I do indeed need a licence if I have never viewed i-player content in my own home, and whether I should contact TV Licensing. Thanks.

la531983

Ignore them, they are on a fishing expedition. In the small event anyone calls at the house, say no thank you and close the door.

rowan222

Ignore them. Fishing intimidation!

They have no way to know that you watched iplayer

Neil49

You were probably logged into iplayer with your email address. This is how they know it was you who was using it. 

littleboo

rowan222 said:

Ignore them. Fishing intimidation!

They have no way to know that you watched iplayer

Clearly they do, unless its a massive co-incidence. Since the OP has had contact with them in the past, it seems more than likely that they have a name, address and email for them, and iPlayer was logged in with that email address. What they don't know is if the property the OP was at was licenced.

rowan222

littleboo said:

rowan222 said:

Ignore them. Fishing intimidation!

They have no way to know that you watched iplayer

Clearly they do, unless its a massive co-incidence. Since the OP has had contact with them in the past, it seems more than likely that they have a name, address and email for them, and iPlayer was logged in with that email address. What they don't know is if the property the OP was at was licenced.

So does TV licensing have access to BBC Iplayers sucriber data? That would seem to be a data protection issue in itself.

Either way the solution is simple. Just make sure your account uses a different email sign up from any that you used to contact TV licensing previously. Just dont respond to them. TV licensing have always work on a principle of intimidation starting with the negative license address list. 

p00hsticks

rowan222 said:

littleboo said:

rowan222 said:

Ignore them. Fishing intimidation!

They have no way to know that you watched iplayer

Clearly they do, unless its a massive co-incidence. Since the OP has had contact with them in the past, it seems more than likely that they have a name, address and email for them, and iPlayer was logged in with that email address. What they don't know is if the property the OP was at was licenced.

So does TV licensing have access to BBC Iplayers sucriber data? That would seem to be a data protection issue in itself.

I've had pop-ups come up before now when accessing iPlayer on either laptop or PC to ask me to confirm that I have a TV licence in order to proceed. 

nsr240

OP here. Just to confirm that I was logged on to my BBC account when accessing the video on i-player. As I was at my brother's licensed property I presumed there would be no issue. 

littleboo

rowan222 said:

littleboo said:

rowan222 said:

Ignore them. Fishing intimidation!

They have no way to know that you watched iplayer

Clearly they do, unless its a massive co-incidence. Since the OP has had contact with them in the past, it seems more than likely that they have a name, address and email for them, and iPlayer was logged in with that email address. What they don't know is if the property the OP was at was licenced.

So does TV licensing have access to BBC Iplayers sucriber data? That would seem to be a data protection issue in itself.

When you create an account, you are consenting to information being shared with TVL

"We share some of your personal information with TV Licensing...."

mta999

There is no.issue - if the premises are licenced you can use iPlayer

The problem is an admin one - you used fred@gmail.com for the declaration and fred@gmail.com to sign into iPlayer.

Cornucopia

A few points on the above:-

- TV Licensing IS the BBC.   There is no data transfer issue in them having access to the same database(s).   There might be a data misuse issue based on the poor design of the process they are using.

- The OP does not need their own Licence to access iPlayer IF they are doing so in a location that is already Licensed.

- TV Licensing do indeed operate a process where email addresses are matched between different sources to try to establish when iPlayer has been used by someone with the same email address as a lapsed Licence (or No Licence Needed submission).   

- This matching process is fundamentally ill-conceived, and cannot be relied upon to make the kind of definitive accusations of Licence evasion that BBC/TVL is producing.   (It's sad that the BBC/TVL doesn't know or doesn't care that their process has multiple flaws).

- The OP's scenario is a good example of a completely legitimate situation that can be mistakenly picked up by BBC/TVL as suspected evasion.  

- Misusing and inappropriately processing data like this may be a data protection issue.  

- There is no requirement to contact BBC/TVL, and (at the moment) they do not appear to be following up these notifications.