Watching BBC i-player away from home without a licence

Cornucopia

I'd suggest deleting the iPlayer account, and then they won't be able to match it any more.

If you need access to iPlayer to use in a Licensed location, then set up a new account with a different email address.

eschaton

They caught me with that 3/4 years ago. 

Simplest things to do are:

Ignore email and any future emails on same subject. 

Delete your iPlayer account. 

Create a new iPlayer account with an email address that they can’t trace to you. 

Do no licence needed declaration again. 

No point in getting involved with explanations etc…

rowan222

Cornucopia said:

- 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 process is indeed flawed. The OP's scenario would never have happened if the email address for their iplayer account was different from the one that they registered No License Needed submission.

I do have a valid TV license.  BUT....when registering for online accounts of any sort I always use a couple of "junk" email accounts that are only used for that purpose. This is simply to protect against spam etc. So if I were to make a No License Needed submission via another email address there would never be a match. In fact anyone could do this even if they didn't have a TV license. Just saying!

nsr240

Cornucopia said:

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.

This is so useful - thank you so much for replying so comprehensively, it's much appreciated.

Cornucopia

nsr240 said:

Cornucopia said:

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.

This is so useful - thank you so much for replying so comprehensively, it's much appreciated.

No problem - happy to help.