If you’re thinking of buying a dodgy streaming media device to keep the kids happy over Christmas, you could be placing the lives of your family, pets, neighbours, friends and visiting relatives at risk, according to new research.

FACT, the organisation, which brought you information as terrifying as ‘piracy funds organised crime’, ‘piracy funds terrorism’ and that advert at the beginning of DVDs in which a huge fat demonic blacksmith sets fire to a stack of CDs with a red hot brand, reports that in a recent test of Kodi boxes, 100% of the devices failed national electrical safety regulations.

The popularity of the streaming media boxes has grown enormously over the last couple of years. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) estimates that more than one million of these illegal devices have been sold in the UK in the last two years, putting untold thousands of innocent lives in jeopardy!

The IPO’s report for 2016-17 claims that 15% of all internet users aged 12+ are reported to have consumed at least one item of illegal content between March and May 2017! Figures supplied by the Industry Trust for IP indicate that 19% of adults watch content via set-top, streaming, Android, or Kodi boxes! Despite this, the report notes that only 47 people were found guilty of offenses under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act during 2016! Down on the 69 found guilty in the previous year.

Kieron Sharp, Director General of FACT said, “The fact that so many illegal streaming devices have all failed to meet UK safety standards is shocking. Alongside the risks of exposing your home network to damaging malware and your children to inappropriate content, it should now be clear that the dangers these illegal devices pose far outweigh any benefit of buying them.

“We believe hundreds of thousands of illicit streaming devices were sold between Black Friday and Christmas last year. This year, if you want to safely and reliably enjoy premium sports, TV or films go directly to the official provider.”

According to TorrentFreak, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) puts the number of Kodi users in the world at around 38 million, 70% of whom download content illegally. That’s 26 million people who are ‘committing criminal offences’!

Speaking to The Independent Sharp said: “What we’ve been looking at in conjunction with many of our clients and members are the different levels of crime being committed. There’s the manufacture and importation of devices, and then the distribution and selling of those. We’re also looking at the people who are providing the apps and add-ons, the developers.

“And then we’ll also be looking at, at some point, the end user. The reason for end users to come into this is that they are committing criminal offences.”

Further sleuthing from TorrentFreak highlighted three key findings:

1. Kodi is software, so very unlikely to catch fire
2. The above research tested nine boxes
3. Cheap unbranded chargers (the main source of the problem) are a huge issue for electrical equipment in the UK. In the last year both Pound World and Home Bargains were fined for selling tens of thousands of chargers which failed UK electrical safety standards

In other news, instances of clickbait headlines in digital technology websites are also reportedly on the rise.