Disclosing Subscriber Details Without a Court Order

According to Torrentfreak, Sky have an agreement with FACT, a private, limited company, to disclose details of Sky subscribers without any court order whatsoever.

"Initially FACT had considered that an account might have been held with comms provider BSKYB so wrote to the company asking for information � FACT apparently have �an agreement� with BSKYB to obtain information."

"BSKYB responded back saying no accounts were held at the Vickerman�s address"

http://torrentfreak.com/movie-studios-compiled-scary...

Are you happy to have your details passed on to a third-party without your consent or any official court order?

Sky don't seem to be too bothered about protecting their customers' details.

In reply to a post by Pod:

According to Torrentfreak, Sky have an agreement with FACT, a private, limited company, to disclose details of Sky subscribers without any court order whatsoever.

"Initially FACT had considered that an account might have been held with comms provider BSKYB so wrote to the company asking for information � FACT apparently have �an agreement� with BSKYB to obtain information."

"BSKYB responded back saying no accounts were held at the Vickerman�s address"

http://torrentfreak.com/movie-studios-compiled-scary...

Are you happy to have your details passed on to a third-party without your consent or any official court order?

Sky don't seem to be too bothered about protecting their customers' details.

Just as well they didn't hand out the details of any subscribers or customers there else I would've been pretty concerned.

Evidence for such an agreement beyond a story on a site called 'Torrent Freak' which is unsurprisingly hostile to copyright and any attempt to enforce it please. I don't take Torrent Freak at face value.

I ask for this evidence as if BSkyB are handing details of customers to 3rd parties without our consent they're breaking the law.

The email refers to a data protection application, so there could be previous communication between FACT and Sky on this that isn't being shown so we can't be sure there was no court order.

Sky and other ISP's haven't really been willing to share data without court orders so I don't see why they'd be any different on this case.

From a quick glance most of the information looks like what can be obtained from credit checks, which can reveal a surprising amount about you.

Plus also FACT seemed already to have the information about the person, and Sky apepars to have simply replied that the person does not appear to be their customer. Most piracy stuff, like the current GoldenEye/o2 all the investigating people have is an IP address and it is the translation of that to an account holder that usually requires the court order.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Plus also FACT seemed already to have the information about the person, and Sky apepars to have simply replied that the person does not appear to be their customer.

Sky's reply looks like they would have divulged more information if they had it, unless they simply lie and say "no customer" for every query.

But I agree that there may be a court order which isn't reported in that article.

Or if it had matched then may have given a different answer.

Need to actually consult a proper lawyer to find out the legal stance, when someone is making an enquiry so specific, i.e. knows name/address and just wants customer or not confirming.

I'm not actually sure how such an agreement would benefit Sky (regardless of the legal ramifications).

As mentioned previously, torrent freak are notoriously biased and are probably not a good source for news like that.