According to a former Freedom2Surf broadband customer, who switched providers after Tiscali acquired the ISP, he has recently been threatened with disconnection even though he is no longer a customer of the ISP.

A former Freedom2Surf customer, who switched to another provider when the Internet Service Provider was acquired by Tiscali has recently reported that he was contacted by Tiscali, accused of illegal downloads, and threatened with disconnection, even though he was no longer a customer of the ISP.

Euan MacLay claims that he received a letter from the ISP accusing him of illegally downloading a television show that he does not even watch, Stargate Atlantis. The letter was sent by the ISP after it received a copyright infringement notice from a Hollywood studio.

The letter to Mr MacLay read: ‘We have received a complaint regarding an allegation of Copyright Infringement. We were supplied an IP address of the system that was sharing the alleged copyrighted material, which we traced to your PIPEX ADSL account… Failure to respond or further infringements will cause your account to be temporarily suspended, and could also result in your account being terminated.’

Furthermore, when Mr MacLay called the ISP to find out what was going on he was told by a customer service representative: “When I had a look at our systems it was clear that your account was closed on 03/03/08 and the IP that you were using was allocated to a new customer after that. Our systems clearly show this so I am not 100 per cent sure how the abuse team got your name associated to the IP.”

Tiscali has since apologised for the error, stating: ‘Freedom2Surf apologises for this error. The email was generated by an automatic F2S abuse system managed externally. This system is no longer in place and has very recently been brought in house as part of the integration of Pipex’s platforms with Tiscali.’