AMAZON has blocked several popular but dodgy streaming apps from Fire TV Sticks in a fresh crackdown.
The tech giant had already blacklisted Flix Vision and Live NetTV, confirming to The Sun this week that the pair “exhibited malicious behaviour”.
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It now seems that the firm has targeted more potentially dangerous apps.
Blink Streamz and Ocean Streamz are the latest to be disabled, according to AFTVNews.
A message apparently appears on screen warning users that the two apps “can put your device or personal data at risk”.
Ocean Streamz’s website already flashes up as dangerous when trying to access it on Google Chrome.
Read more about Fire Sticks
People are able to download shady apps because of Amazon’s open source tech on Fire TV Sticks, meaning you can download apps from outside the company’s own app store as you please.
Amazon has faced growing criticism for its response to illegal streaming.
Broadcaster Sky has hit out at the US firm, saying it does not do enough to tackle piracy.
Illegal streaming is estimated to be costing the industry “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
Nick Herm, chief operating officer at Sky, recently accused Amazon of failing to do “enough engagement to address some of those problems, where people are buying these devices in bulk”.
He also believes that modified Fire Sticks “probably” make up “about half of the piracy” in the UK alone.
Warning over ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks
Illegal streaming can be delivered by a number of devices by one of the most common are ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks, which means a third-party media server software has been installed on to it.
The software most commonly used is called Kodi.
It can grant users unrestricted access to new features and apps the normal version of the device wouldn’t allow – but it is not legal to use in the UK.
But it becomes illegal when a box is used to stream subscription channels for free.
It is also illegal to buy or sell these modified devices which have become known as “fully-loaded” – a term that describes how the software has been altered to allow access to subscription-only channels.
“These devices are legal when used to watch legitimate, free to air, content,” the government said at the time.
“They become illegal once they are adapted to stream illicit content, for example TV programmes, films and subscription sports channels without paying the appropriate subscriptions.”
