Have you received an email from BT internet titled “Sharing Copyrighted Material Email” and been warned to “Get it right from a genuine site?” If you have, you’re part of the “BT Sharing Copyrighted Material Email” campaign and it’s probably time you made your internet connection a bit more private.
Failing to do this means you run the risk of further repercussions from your ISP. But don’t worry. In this article, we’ll show you what you need to do to keep all your internet activity private from BT internet.
See related: Sky Broadband Copyrighted Material Email: What you NEED to do!
Why have I received the BT copyrighted material email?
The email should explain why you received it. In the majority of cases, it’s because someone with access to your internet has downloaded or streamed copyrighted material illegally. For example, if a film or TV show has been downloaded using a torrent, then this is probably what prompted the email from BT.
There are 2 simple ways to make sure you don’t receive similar emails from BT.
1. Stop using sites or torrents that give you illegal access to copyrighted material.
2. Use a VPN. This will make all of your online activity undetectable by your ISP. In this case BT. This is because VPNs use a network of global servers and military-grade encryption to keep your data secure.
What VPN should I use?
It is definitely worth spending 5 minutes reading our Best VPN of 2018 article to find out which VPN provides the best service for you.
If you don’t have 5 minutes, our top four VPNs are ExpressVPN (£5.05/month), Ivacy (£1.79/month), PureVPN (£2.36/month) and NordVPN (£2.39/month). Each of these services are very simple to use, provide lots of servers, have fast connection/streaming speeds and have helpful customer support.
ExpressVPN has consistently topped our independent tests for speed and reliability. It is slightly more expensive than the others. But worth the extra bit of money.
ExpressVPN (£5.03/month) will give you complete online privacy and hide all of your online activity from BT and even the Government.
Will a free VPN work?
Yes and no. A free VPN will give you all the same privacy features as a paid-for service. However, your connection speeds will be slow and you will have a data limit that will cap the amount you can download. These caps are usually tiny. Which mean you won’t be able to download anything significant via a torrent.
What does a VPN do?
If you want to take control of your online privacy. A VPN is the way to go. Using a VPN will encrypt your data to a military-grade standard. This means BT won’t be able to track any of your online activity.
The good VPNs use AES-256 encryption. This is the same encryption standard used by the US government. Encryption is what you need to stop ISPs tracking what you’re downloading.
Is streaming/torrenting illegal?
Yes, it is. However, the legality surrounding streaming sites and torrents gets vague if you already own some form of the content you are downloading.
Legally this is considered a “grey area.” For example. Users that have already bought a film on DVD, or downloaded it through iTunes could argue that downloading the film again, with torrents isn’t a breach of copyright. They have already purchased the content.
Using the scenario above it’s possible to argue that BT’s “Get it right from a genuine site,” email is unjust.
Taking that into account, our advice doesn’t change. At best the example above is only a legal grey area. It’s is not worth the risk.
Getting a VPN is much more attractive and very simple.
