“Have you heard about WakaTV,” an eager person will tell me when the conversation inevitably moves to what I do for work at a braai or party.

As it turns out, yes I have heard of WakaTV and despite MultiChoice’s efforts to take down the operator, the service lives on, and attracts monthly subscriptions of R160 from folks who are looking for a bargain.

What is WakaTV? To put it plainly, the “service”, for want of a better word, aggregates various streams and sells access to customers. The first question folks seem to not ask is whether the service is legal and I suspect that this is because asking this question immediately brings its existence into question.

We say this because at R160, WakaTV comes in at a far lower price than all of the content it offers. What that content is isn’t exactly clear as since MultiChoice and law enforcement took action against the operator, the website is low on information about what exactly it offers.

Just for a moment ask yourself how WakaTV is able to offer all of the content it does for less than the collective price of all the streaming sites and broadcasters it’s lifting content from? If this was really legitimate, wouldn’t Netflix and MultiChoice not be selling access for a similar price? Of course they would because at a fraction of R160, they wouldn’t need to worry about attracting new customers ever again.

Seeing as now streaming services is offering its wares for prices lower than what WakaTV does, there is reason to believe something shady is happening here. If the arrests in June weren’t enough to go on.

So what’s the problem?

The problem lies in folks who take up this service – and countless others like it – only to have weird things start to happen. Importantly, WakaTV and other IPTV services rooted in piracy have no control over the streams they have hijacked. If suddenly the source for SuperSport goes down because MultiChoice shut down the pirate, that’s it until the operators find another source. The same goes for content from other providers and rest assured, these services are constantly having to find ways around content protections and the like, often dipping into incredibly questionable techniques that breach laws.

Many of these services are also operating through a third party. This means subscribers need to download an app, that isn’t associated with the service they’re paying for, to access the pirated content. The risk here is that the app you download may be compromised or could be compromised in the future.

Moreso, the quality of the stream is entirely out of your control. We’ve seen reports of streams from Waka buffering endlessly, content stopping midway through the runtime and even English-language content suddenly switching to Mandarin. You aren’t in control of the remote when using IPTV services, you’re just a viewer. However, that doesn’t mean you’re safe from legal retaliation.

Because you pay for WakaTV, authorities have an easy way to track you down. Tracing your IP is also going to be easy because if you’re using something like Waka because it’s a “good deal” I very much doubt you’re using a VPN to spoof your IP address. What’s more, is that nefarious individuals can use your payment information to steal money from you. No matter how much you think you can trust these people, if they’re willing to steal from big broadcasters, the leap to stealing from customers is more of a hop.

The risk here is simply too great and I wouldn’t recommend my worst enemy use this service. In fact I’ve actively told them not to use it.

Remember when piracy was, free?

What astounds me the most about WakaTV, My Family Cinema and other questionable IPTV services is how they became so popular when pirated content is readily available online in any format you want it, for free.

Aside from torrent websites where one can download movies, series, music, games and more, there are countless streaming services that offer premium content for free. We don’t recommend using these as they can surreptitiously download malware and other nasty things while you watch your content.

Of course, piracy has evolved and requires a bit more work on the end-user’s side to avoid the long arm of Johnny Law but it just astounds me that the laziness has reached a point where folks are content with paying somebody else to do the hard work for them. Unfortunately, the efforts of WakaTV and its ilk have been found to be lacking and that means viewers will likely be the next in the sights of authorities.

So please stop trying to sell me on WakaTV, My Family Cinema and other IPTV services that offer aggregation of content at a cheap price. It’s a scam and if I do want to engage in piracy, I’ll do it the way we used to back in the day – by downloading it.

[Image by Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE 💛💙 from Pixabay]