Fire Stick Expert Reveals 'Tell-Tale' Word Police Use To Track Illegal Streamers

An expert on Amazon Fire Sticks, which can be altered to illegally stream sporting events, has revealed what 'tell-tale' word police use in their investigations to find those responsible.

In the age of increasingly expensive subscription costs to watch sport on Sky Sports and TNT Sports, as well as official club channels, more and more people are turning to alternative viewing methods such as IPTV.

A Sky Sports subscription, for instance, costs users £22 per month, while a TNT Sports subscription comes in at £30.99.

TNT Sports took over the viewing rights held by Eurosport after the two companies merged at the end of February 2025.

But while users previously paid £6.99 a month to watch Eurosport - which showed snooker, cycling and tennis coverage as well as the Olympics - TNT hiked costs up to £30.99 a month for fans to watch the same coverage.

IPTV - Internet Protocol Television - technology allows users to stream sports action using often jailbroken Fire Sticks, including Premier League football matches.

The practice, however, is illegal and in breach of copyright, with companies having launched a significant crackdown against those who supply the Fire Sticks.

Amazon themselves, meanwhile, unveiled its new Fire TV Stick 4K Select device to consumers last month.

The device, experts claim, will prevent the 'dodgy Firesticks' from working, as it will block users from 'sideloading' apps - when software is uploaded to the device from outside the official app stores.

Various arrests relating to the supply of Fire Sticks have been made over the past year.

FACT chairman Kieran Sharp, whose company works with the Premier League to prevent copyright infringement, told the Daily Mail of the methods that authorities use to find those responsible.

He explained that they use specific words, due to how much data is often stored on computers or other devices that are seized by authorities.

"A common search term is 'illegal'," he says. "You would be surprised by how many suspects message others with phrases like, 'This is illegal', or 'We need to be careful as it's illegal'.

"The importance of doing word searching is that if you seize a computer and there's like three terabytes of data on it, you're never going to search the whole computer. You're only going to search the computer for your terms. You're never going to know what's fully on it.

"So you have to concentrate on the evidence. You'll know the name of the stream, the name of the subscription they're selling, the names of the people involved. You might even have a customer database."