iBomma Raid Reveals 21000 Movies: Piracy Has Sucked Life Out Of The Indian Film Industry Over The Years, But With The New Arrest Of iBomma And Bappam Kingpin Immadi Ravi, The Fortune Has Changed. The Collapse Of The Network Can Finally Give Tollywood A Sigh Of Relief Because One Of The Worst Piracy Networks Ever Witnessed Has Been Brought Down.
How The Ibomma Web Was Spun?
Ibomma Was Not Any Ordinary Pirate Streaming Site. It Was A Complete International Piracy Factory, Made To Spew South Indian Movies And OTT Release Nearly Immediately. The Presence Of The Syndicate Was As Far South As Hyderabad And As Far North As The Netherlands And Myanmar, Making It An Intricate Web That Was Difficult To Track And More Like Following Shadows.
And The Consequences? Devastating.
- India In 2023, 22,400 Crore Were Lost To Piracy By The Indian Film Industry.
- In 2024, Tollywood Alone Incurred Losses Of Close To 3700 Crores, With Ibomma Being One Of The Biggest Offenders.
Months Of Covert Surveillance Eventually Resulted In The TFCF And The Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police Bringing The Network To A Halt By Shutting Down 65 Sites That Were Mirror Websites Of The Network. It Resulted In A Dramatic Arrest – Ravi Was Caught At An Airport In Hyderabad After He Had Returned To India After His Stay In France.
It Was Followed Soon After By A Meeting Of Megastars, Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna, S.S. Rajamouli, And Producer Dil Raju With Commissioner VC Sajjanar, To Thank Him In Regards To The Decisive Action. However, The Actual Outrage Came In The Future: Ravi Was Secretly Gathering Personal Information On Millions Of Users Who Came To The Pirated Site.
What The Investigation Disclosed?
The Police Uncovered A Shocking Amount Of Evidence Revealing The Extent Of The Operation:
- A Disk Hoc Filled With 21000 Pirated Movies.
- Almost 5 Million Users’ Sensitive Information.
- Several Laptops, Mobile Phones, Cheque Books, And Debit Cards.
- Bank Accounts Of 3 Crore, Which Are Now Confiscated.
In The Interrogation, Ravi Is Supposed To Have Become An Admirer Of Having Made Hundreds Of Crores Of Money Out Of Piracy. The Ibomma Network, Which Could Not Be Stopped Until Now, Has Been Destroyed By Wiping Down Over 65 Mirrors. Such Piracy By Producers Is Estimated To Cause An Overall Damage Of 24,000 Crore To The Industry.
What Becomes Of The Data Of The Compromised User?
The Logs Of The Stolen User Database Are Now In The Limelight Of The Investigation. Cybercrime Investigators Are Trying To Establish:
- How The Data Was Collected
- Whether It Was Shared Or Sold
- In Case It Was Applied To Commit Fraud.
Users In This Online Trap May Be Under Deadly Risks:
- Spam Attacks And Phishing Traps.
- Banking Fraud And Spear-Phishing.
- Viruses And Hardware Susceptibility.
- Browsing History-Based Tracking.
The Retrieved Information Should Also Aid The Police To Chart Out The Entire Piracy Network, Monitor Offshore Associates, And Profile Covert Funds.
This Is Why This Crackdown Is A Game-Changer
Film Piracy Is Not Just An Issue Of An Industry, But A Social Risk To The Safety Of The People. Illegal Websites Have A Tendency Of Tracking Machines, Stealing Personal Data, And Putting Users At Cyber-Threats Much More Than Movie Leaks.
The Memory Of This Crackdown Is A Bitter Pill:
The Most Secure Action To Save Your Information And Help The Filmmakers Is To Watch Movies Only On Legal Sites.
