An Empirical Measurement Study of Free Live Streaming Services

Live streaming is one of the most popular Internet activities. Nowadays, there has been an increase in free live streaming (FLS) services that provide unauthorized broadcasting of live events, attracting millions of viewers. These opportunistic providers often have modest network infrastructures, and monetize their services through advertising and data analytics, which raises concerns about the performance, quality of experience, and user privacy when using these services. In this paper, we measure and analyze the behaviour of 20 FLS sports sites on Android smartphones, focusing on packet-level, video player, and privacy aspects. In addition, we compare FLS services with two legitimate online sports networks. Our measurement results show that FLS sites suffer from scalability issues during highly-popular events, deliver lower QoE than legitimate providers, and often use obscure and/or suspicious tracking services. Caution is thus advised when using FLS services.