Kodi boxes can SPY on owners to let crooks or cops monitor ‘everything they do

Firm which makes the streaming software which powers streaming gadgets issues urgent warning

KODI boxes can be turned into spy devices capable of snooping on their owners.

That’s the warning from the firm which makes the Kodi software, which has been used by millions of people and can allow them to illegally watch films or sports matches.

Kodi is the name of software which comes installed on so-called Kodi boxes.

It is not against the law to use Kodi, but it becomes illegal when people used “add-ons” to watch sports, movies or any content that generally needs to be paid for – and it’s also illegal to sell the boxes “fully loaded” with software which allows piracy.

Three websites which used to be owned by a defunct service called TVAddons.ag have now been handed over to a legal firm in Canada – which has remained tight-lipped about its reasons for overtaking the sites.

Nathan Betzen, a project manager at Kodi, fears that anyone who takes control of websites which were once used to distribute add-ons could “do whatever they wanted” to people using them.

“If some malware author wanted, he could easily install a watcher that reports back the user’s IP address and everything they were doing in Kodi,” he told Torrent Freak.

This means that anyone who used Kodi illegally could be grassed up to the authorities.

However, it’s not clear what’s actually happening with TVAddons, because the law firm which is controlling them has not yet revealed it plans for the pages.

Premier League games could be streamed online in a bid to KILL the Kodi box, it was suggested recently.

Millions of people use Kodi boxes to stream pay-per-view sport, films and TV shows on their telly for free.

But following a recent European Court ruling, which deemed the boxes to be illegal, over 200 distributors of the gadget have stopped selling them.

The Kodi Foundation recently described those streaming illegally as “self-entitled and whiny”.

It says Kodi has been hijacked by “criminals” who manipulate it to watch copyright material.