The Public Prosecution Service and the FIOD rolled up an illegal television service last night. The service offered about ten thousand TV channels and all films and series from, for example, Disney +, Viaplay, Netflix and ESPN for ten euros per month. Dave Maasland, director of cybersecurity company ESET Netherlands, calls the size alarming.
Phone shops sold boxes for cash that gave access to the service. At the end of last year, a major investigation was launched into these types of services. ‘It would involve one billion euros per year,’ says Maasland. An estimated 1.5 million Dutch people use an illegal TV service. Maasland therefore finds the money involved enormous.
Globe Data Center
“It is probably a party whose main suspects are in the Netherlands.” A data center in Den Helder is involved in the case. Maasland says: ‘It would be the Globe Datacenter, but that is not certain.’
The Dutch hosting sector wants a more critical look at such services and other illegal services that are hosted or facilitated on such a platform. ‘The police work with blacklists, but that is allowed even more, because the hosts are not being held accountable enough now,’ says Maasland.
European youth
Almost twelve percent of young people in Europe use the same or a similar platform. ‘These kinds of services need to be tackled more firmly, especially since they are also facilitated in the Netherlands.’
Last year, more than a hundred similar services were taken off the air. ‘So this could be a drop in the ocean’, adds Maasland.
