Ronan Murphy

Up until now, the legal battle with these dodgy boxes has predominantly been a game of whack-a-mole against the distributors.

These are the guys who sell the boxes in pubs or online.

This court order completely changes the game by forcing Revolut to hand over customer data.

Sky has literally jumped straight over the consumer's living room wall and are in a position where they've gone straight to the consumer.

I do think it's important to note, because looking at a lot of the kind of the blowback from this, it's important to state that, you know, Revolut were not acting as the moral police here trying to catch the pirates.

When they were approached by the Sky Television lawyers, they essentially told them, look,

We're neutral in this.

We have strict GDPR laws to uphold.

We cannot and we will not hand over customers' banking history just because, you know, a private company like Sky asks for it.

If you want this data, you've got to go get a high court judge to order it.

And once that judge signs the order, Revolut had no choice but to comply.

they were strictly treating this as a matter of legal compliance.

And I think the key takeaway here for a lot of people is that this completely explodes the myth that these financial apps that are on people's phones are some kind of digital wild west where transactions are hidden.

Revolut is a fully licensed, regulated bank.

They are subject to the exact same laws as the high street banks, AIB, Bank of Ireland, etc.

And if you leave a digital paper trail on your phone, a court order can have that pulled.

So people are really starting to wake up to the fact that these apps don't offer that kind of anonymous service that they envisaged that they might.