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    • My understanding is that they won't provide the name to me whether the investigation is Live or Closed, & I have no legal rep as I didn't have P.I. Cover on my policy, & am intending to claim using OIC.org.uk, but remain completely stuck as they 100% cannot open a claim on the portal without both the Reg. No. & Name of the other driver.  
    • thanks again ftmdave, your words are verey encouraging and i do appreciate them. i have taken about 2 hours to think of a letter to write to the ceo...i will paste it below...also how would i address a ceo? do i just put his name? or put dear sir? do you think its ok?  i would appreciate feedback/input from anybody if anything needs to be added/taken away, removed if incorrect etc. i am writing it on behalf of my friend..she is the named driver  - im the one with the blue badge and owner of the car - just for clarification. thanks in adavance to everyone.       My friend and I are both disabled and have been a victim of disability discrimination on the part of your agents.   I have been incorrectly 'charged' by your agent 'excel parking' for overstaying in your car park, but there was no overstay. The letter I recieved said the duration of stay was 15 minutes but there is a 10 minute grace period and also 5 minutes consideration time, hence there was no duration of stay of 15 minutes.   I would like to take this oppertunity to clarify what happend at your Gravesend store. We are struggling finacially due to the 'cost of living crisis' and not being able to work because we are both disabled, we was attracted to your store for the 10 items for £10 offer. I suffer dyslexia and depression and my friend who I take shopping has a mobility disability. We went to buy some shopping at your Gravesend branch of Iceland on 28th of December 2023, we entered your car park, tried to read and understand the parking signs and realised we had to pay for parking. We then realised we didnt have any change for the parking machine so went back to look for coins in the car and when we couldnt find any we left. As my friend has mobility issues it takes some time for me to help him out of the car, as you probably understand this takes more time than it would a normal able bodied person. As I suffer dyslexia I am sure you'll agree that it took me more time than a normal person to read and understand the large amount of information at the pay & display machine. After this, it took more time than an able bodied person to leave the car park especially as I have to help my friend on his crutches etc get back into the car due to his mobility disability. All this took us 15 minutes.   I was the driver of my friends car and he has a blue badge. He then received a 'notice to keeper' for a 'failure to purchase a parking tariff'. On the letter it asked to name the driver if you wasnt the driver at the time, so as he wasnt the driver he named me. I appealed the charge and told them we are disabled and explained the situation as above. The appeal was denied, and even more so was totally ignored regarding our disabilities and that we take longer than an able bodied person to access the car and read the signs and understand them. As our disabilities were ignored and disregarded for the time taken I believe this is discrimination against us. I cannot afford any unfair charges of this kind as I am severely struggling financially. I cannot work and am a carer for my disabled Son who also has a mental and mobility disability. I obviously do not have any disposable income and am in debt with my bills. So its an absolute impossibility for me to pay this incorrect charge.     After being discriminated by your agent my friend decided to contact 'iceland customer care team' on my behalf and again explained the situation and also sent photos of his disabled blue badge and proof of disability. He asked the care team to cancel the charge as ultimately its Iceland's land/property and you have the power over excel parking to cancel it. Again we was met with no mention or consideration for our disability and no direct response regarding the cancellation, all we was told was to contact excel parking. He has replied over 20 times to try to get the 'care team' to understand and cancel this but its pointless as we are just ignored every time. I believe that Ignoring our disability is discrimination which is why I am now contacting you.     I have noticed on your website that you are 'acting' to ease the 'cost of living crisis' : https://about.iceland.co.uk/2022/04/05/iceland-acts-to-ease-the-cost-of-living-crisis/   If you really are commited to helping people in this time of crisis ..and especially two struggling disabled people, can you please cancel this charge as it will only cause more damage to our mental health if you do not.  
    • I've also been in touch via the online portal to the Police's GDPR team, to request the name of the other Driver. Got this response:   Dear Mr. ---------   Our Ref: ----------   Thank you for your request which has been forwarded to the Data Protection Team for consideration.   The data you are requesting is third party, we would not give this information directly to you.   Your solicitor or legal team acting on our behalf would approach us directly with your signed (wet) consent allowing us to consider the request further.   I note the investigation is showing as ‘live’ at this time, we would not considered sharing data for suggested injury until the investigation has been closed.   If you wish to pursue a claim once the investigation has been closed please signpost your legal team to [email protected]   Kind regards   ----------------- Data Protection Assistant    
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    • Hi everyone, Apologies for bringing up the same topic regarding these individuals. I wish I had found this forum earlier, as I've seen very similar cases. However, I need your help in figuring out what to do next because we've involved our partners/resellers. I work as an IT Manager in a company outside of the UK. We acquired a license from a certified reseller (along with a support agreement) and also obtained training sessions from them. The issue arose when we needed to register two people for the training sessions, so we used an external laptop for the second user to keep up with the sessions for only a month. During this period, the laptop was solely used for the training sessions. After two weeks, my boss forwarded an email to me from Ms Vinces, stating that we are using illicit software from SolidWorks. Since this has never happened to me or anyone we know, I went into panic mode and had a meeting with her. During the meeting, we explained that we were using an external laptop solely for the training sessions and that the laptop had not been used within the company since her email. She informed us that for such cases, there are demos and special licenses (though our reseller did not mention these types of licenses when we made our initial purchase). She then mentioned that we had utilized products worth approximately €25k and presented us with two options: either pay the agreed value or acquire SolidWorks products. We expressed that the cost was too high, and our business couldn't support such expenses. I assured her that we would discuss the matter with the company board and get back to her. After the meeting, we contacted the company reseller from whom we purchased the license, explained the situation, and mentioned the use of an external laptop. They said they would speak to Maria and help mediate the situation. We hoped to significantly reduce the cost, perhaps to that of a 1-year professional license. Unfortunately, we were mistaken. The reseller mediated a value €2k less than what Maria had suggested (essentially, we would need to acquire two professional lifetime licenses and two years of support for a total of €23k). This amount is still beyond our means, but they insisted that the price was non-negotiable and wouldn't be reduced any further. The entire situation feels odd because she never provided us with addresses or other evidence (which I should have requested), and she's pressuring us to resolve the matter by the end of the month, with payment to be made through the reseller. This makes me feel as though the reseller is taking advantage of the situation to profit from it. Currently, we're trying to buy some time. We plan to meet with the reseller next week but are uncertain about how to proceed with them or whether we should respond to the mediator.
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      The judge's reasoning is very useful and will certainly be helpful in any other cases relating to third-party rights where the customer has contracted with the courier company by using a broker.
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ACS:Law copyright file sharing claims, Gallant Macmillan - and probably some others along the way...


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i got a response from the SRA today too, they are looking into the matter now. plus a girl from GM told me directly that if i send a lod in, they automatically drop the case! but i think its fair to say, i think the girl was work experience as when i started talkin dsl, packet etc, she said ''er'' alot!!

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i got a response from the SRA today too, they are looking into the matter now. plus a girl from GM told me directly that if i send a lod in, they automatically drop the case! but i think its fair to say, i think the girl was work experience as when i started talkin dsl, packet etc, she said ''er'' alot!!

 

Not quite right. Davenport Lyons's business model was recently leaked via Wikileaks. They put you into a catogory. One extreme that they will not pursue is someone who denies and has official legal representation, to those who respond with indepth technical knowledge as to how their evidence is flawed. At the other end they go after the ones who admit guilt or disclose enough information to warrant pursing.

 

In other words, who is going to pay. To think there is enough money out there to enable these solicitors to prioritise who is going to pay and who isn't.

 

One thing is for sure, if ACS Law had taken someone to Court and had one it would be plastered all over their web site front page.

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@ Scooby Doo69

 

Is there any evidence that Deep packet inspection is actually being used? I would imagine that they are just joining a swarm, collecting IP addresses and then maybe seeing if the IP addresses collected actually offer chunks of the file for uplaod / downlaod.

 

They may just be collecting the IP addresses and not even checking anything else.

 

I think that DPI would more likely happen in the case of the ISP like Virgin are currently trialing.

 

I believe so where Digiprotect are involved. Otherwise, you are quite right, they connect to a swarm and hoover up IP addresses for those uploading.

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Guys - Which and the BBC have been in touch with me.... for a number of personal reasons I said no to an interview ( one been the job I do ;) ) how ever I can tell you The One Show are investigating this and will be doing some thing soon....

 

Needless to say I had a good chat including to the researcher in ( I think cos I do waffel ) how this all works from a techy point of view.

 

Its more rife though as one of my mates got the cascada one today....

 

Terran

 

The One Show are crying out for someone to interview, but to date no one has come forward. They love this sort of thing and the thought of Dom chasing down and confronting Andrew of ACS is too funny to imagine.

 

Come on Guys, go for it!

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sky are sending me a letter to say that i have done everything in my power to stop me from being hacked etc, like i said above they have agreed to let me buy my own more secure router and gallant and macmillan will drop the case on me personally once i have sent the letter back. plus, (currently in my dads house using his laptop) when i spoke to sky, they stated that there was a lot of traffic through my modem as we spoke, which is good, considering my pc is gettin fixed, but its enough for sky to help out even more. what scares me the most was that next door but one has used 452GB this month alone, so makes me wonder how many more times i'll have to do all this cos of him. just wish i could stop him once and for all........can't wait to get my new modem :(

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Been sent a threatening letter from Gallant Macmillan re: copyright for ministry of sound using bittorrent P2P network, has anyone got any advice, has it happened to you, what do I need to do next

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sky are sending me a letter to say that i have done everything in my power to stop me from being hacked etc, like i said above they have agreed to let me buy my own more secure router and gallant and macmillan will drop the case on me personally once i have sent the letter back. plus, (currently in my dads house using his laptop) when i spoke to sky, they stated that there was a lot of traffic through my modem as we spoke, which is good, considering my pc is gettin fixed, but its enough for sky to help out even more. what scares me the most was that next door but one has used 452GB this month alone, so makes me wonder how many more times i'll have to do all this cos of him. just wish i could stop him once and for all........can't wait to get my new modem :(

 

Use the mac filter on the router, it only allows the mac addresses of the computers you add to the list. Set this up using a desktop which is directly connected to the router!

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HI

 

My Dad also got the letter from Gallant Macmillan the other day asking for £375.

 

Now my dads on Job seakers so cannot pay that much and don't even know how to use a PC.

 

My parants are saying to ignore the letter.

 

Now the file may have been downloaded but on my mates laptop or someone one got into our Sky Router.

 

Should I send a LOD?

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Use the mac filter on the router, it only allows the mac addresses of the computers you add to the list. Set this up using a desktop which is directly connected to the router!---- cheers, me new router has arrived so i'll wait for me pc to come home too xx

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Is there any evidence that Deep packet inspection is actually being used? I would imagine that they are just joining a swarm, collecting IP addresses and then maybe seeing if the IP addresses collected actually offer chunks of the file for uplaod / downlaod.

 

They may just be collecting the IP addresses and not even checking anything else.

 

I think that DPI would more likely happen in the case of the ISP like Virgin are currently trialing.

 

 

A while back letters from ACS Law provided details of the "forensic IT specialists" - namely NG3 Systems Limited. It is thought that the program used is the one advertised on their website:

 

eyeNet

eyeNet Is a Powerful & Fast Traffic Analayser Featuring DPI - Deep Packet Inspection Technology

 

There is more info on this (rather dodgy looking) company further back in this thread - since this information was published on here, ACS Law have stopped providing their details in the recent letters.

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I got my letter today i feel a lot better now after seeing im not the only one. I read that there is a template for a letter which i can use how do i go about downloading or seeing what to put in my letter thanx

 

I would also like a copy of the template letter, as this is getting to me, I received a letter saturday and I have no idea what to do about it

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For all the people asking about "deep packet inspection" this is a form of interception mainly used by ISP's if they are monitoring what somebody is doing, it has to be based at the ISP because all of their traffic flows through.

 

Deep packet inspection is useless for what these monitoring companies do as the computer they are talking to over a P2P network sends the complete packet to their computer anyway, so they have the full packet anyway (A packet is the way computers send info to each other) why would they need to snoop on it again?

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For all the people asking about "deep packet inspection" this is a form of interception mainly used by ISP's if they are monitoring what somebody is doing, it has to be based at the ISP because all of their traffic flows through.

 

Deep packet inspection is useless for what these monitoring companies do as the computer they are talking to over a P2P network sends the complete packet to their computer anyway, so they have the full packet anyway (A packet is the way computers send info to each other) why would they need to snoop on it again?

 

So they can do it remotely? ie inspect the traffic between a known host (the file seeder) and the clients that connect to it to (the download/uplaoder) - it would make sense to do it this way as it guarantees that the host remains anonymous.

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So they actually are monitoring data transfer, and not just getting the IP addresses of the swarm? That's a more honest strategy than what I assumed these companies were up to :)

 

To be honest I don't know for sure - I just think it's more than coincidence that ACS reveiled their IT experts as NG3 Systems Ltd who also happen to be advertising a DPI program on their site.

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So they can do it remotely? ie inspect the traffic between a known host (the file seeder) and the clients that connect to it to (the download/uplaoder) - it would make sense to do it this way as it guarantees that the host remains anonymous.

 

Its impossible for them to intercept a transfer mid flight between two computers to examine the packets without some seriously powerful software and if they did this with out a proper legal consent I am quite sure it would be a highly illegal practice, and would also require direct access to major internet backbones / isp's networks (or they plant viruses but that is all getting a bit xfiles and way over their capability). This is why ISPs usually only use DPI as all of their customers traffic has to travel through their network at some point, allowing them access. ACS:LAW's / GM's monitoring company would have no data transferring over their network/internet unless they are directly connected to a computer this is why they have to connect to the P2P network, then what would the point of having DPI be as they already have the complete packets entering their computers.

 

What it is thought they do is enter a P2P network and broadcast they want certain files from the company they are acting on behalf of, any uploads to their computers are logged (ip address, client software and time stamp). a "whois" is done on the IP immediately and the Isp logged. If it is a uk ip then they keep it, other ips that are not from the uk are binned.

 

ISP's use DPI from my understanding to help with traffic shaping, ie they will find out if your using p2p and throttle your connection to allow other users more bandwidth to watch iplayer or browse etc. Usually happens when your exchange suffers from contention. Maybe the police use it also to help catch terrorists etc that's just pure speculation though.

 

If you are interested in whois check out this site. http://cqcounter.com/whois/

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[...]What it is thought they do is enter a P2P network and broadcast they want certain files from the company they are acting on behalf of, any uploads to their computers are logged (ip address, client software and time stamp).

 

Yeah, that all makes sense. Also, I do remember reading somewhere that an adapted torrent client was being used?

 

However they do it - it doesn't seem that accurate does it?! On the date they accuse me of this, we only had a Wii console connected to the router!

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Yeah, that all makes sense. Also, I do remember reading somewhere that an adapted torrent client was being used?

 

However they do it - it doesn't seem that accurate does it?! On the date they accuse me of this, we only had a Wii console connected to the router!

 

lol your memory must be amazing. If they are just randomly bashing IP addresses into WHOis and finding UK ips then accusing them of downloading some low budget production, then no its no accurate and highly illegal and they would probably end up with long prison sentances. I am 99.99999% sure they wouldn't do this though and their methods are a little more accurate. For some reason when routers are issued to customers they do not come with high security levels and are very vulnerable to attack, there are tutorials freely available just do a google search, also there are hardware dongles that can do all the password cracking you would need to enter somebody's router. This vulnerability is the probable cause of an allegation aimed at yourself (if you are innocent) it is impossible to prove this has happened / didn't happen on the time/date. A quick search of networks in my area reveals around 11 wireless routers/connections, 3 of which have no security and I could access if I pleased (mine now has full WPA2 to stop anything like this happening again to me, although even WPA2 is not completely safe).

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I found this earlier...

 

Gallant MacMillan ?Latest entrants into the hall of Infamy? demand Money for ?Ministry of Sound? Received a letter from ACS LAW?

 

it states at the end "I would urge ANYONE who has received one of these letters who are innocent to contact the SRA."

 

Solicitors Regulation Authority - Contact us

 

Should we all be doing this, the more the better...

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hi. ive just recieved a letter from acs law saying i downloaded "evacuate the dancefloor(the work)"on the 28 aug last year. they are proposing a £295 settlement fee due within 21 days. i cannot find the file on my pc although i have downloaded files using bit torrents b4. i cannot find any records of my pc being online at that time...i believe i was on my way to brighton on holiday. whats the best course of action?

 

thanks in advance

hooper

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Whats bothering me about this is the lack of information about this monitoring software, bearing in mind that these NPO's are granted based on the evidence obtained from it, I wander if there is some kind of industry standard or quality requirments that this software is required to conform to? Surely there should be if it is used evidentually.

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hi i got another letter today about 6-7 months after i got the first 1 should i send a LOD or just ingore this 1 as well,

 

If you have not already send a LOD, do not ignore them as it could make matters worse. What makes me laugh is why has it taken so long to get back to you. Probably to busy with their mass mailing.

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