[jools5000]

Looks like some organisation has done some research into the murky world of using piracy addons.  Most is pretty much much what everyone here already knows

https://fossbytes.com/kodi-addons-malwar...passwords/
The report (PDF) is here https://www.digitalcitizensalliance.org/...eam_v6.pdf

tl;dr Basically you open yourself and your network up to a lot of unsavoury software which can attempt to probe and potentially exploit the device and other devices/data on your home network by downloading and running this garbage.

[DarrenHill]

It's just a shame they (fossbytes) undermine their own credibility by having pages (which I won't link to) of the "best builds for Kodi" and "best repos for kodi", almost all of which contain banned crap and are on our banned list...

The conclusions of the report itself are entirely correct though, and are something that seem to get ignored all too often and that common sense should lead users to (at least those who aren't blinded by greed and ignorance).

[jjd-uk]

None of that surprises me.

It's ridiculous how people think you can get normally paid for content magically for free with no risk, people do not provide these apps out of the goodness of their hearts, plus providing the infrastructure for these apps costs money, so someone somewhere is going to be doing something to cover these costs and make money.

[jools5000]

Exactly.  This is the issue these days - people just don't understand the cost. 

When its Amazon Prime or Netfilx for example, thats easy as you pay money.  Some companies like Facebook, you're paying with your data.

The pirate stuff... well while some people genuinely just want to share stuff, its impossible to weed them out from the other people that want to profit.  Not to mention that a lot of this stuff tends to be "install this APK" or "add this repository", there's no way to verify anything. 

While legit software/repositories can also be compromised/abused, the pirate stuff is always going to be a bad idea.  Its not in their interests to just give you a load of free content.

[Lunatixz]

...While legit software/repositories can also be compromised/abused, the pirate stuff is always going to be a bad idea.  Its not in their interests to just give you a load of free content.

I wrote the below script the last time there was a report of hijacked modules/addons, it won't protect you; however, it serves to notify users when an addon may have been compromised.
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=335539

[CraigHB]

I'm still learning about Kodi being a new user, but one of the first things I gathered is to stay clear of those shady repositories.