The Personal Info Privacy Paradox.

Posted:13.08.2010, 15:54

I think this may become a recurrent issue that US players are going to see more often in the autumn of the pre-regulatory days in the US online gaming market...While its merely conjecture, I feel this way because the rouge groups who stand no chance of licensing in a post regulatory US online gaming world are squeezing all the profit they can out of the remaining and largely unknown time frame.

The issue at hand centers around the automated 'risk management' systems currently in place with many of the top tier (Ethically Sound) RTG's, and it has one huge intrinsic flaw. ((Yeah, and it used to have 28 huge intrinsic flaws before April when all the Domain Holding's sites publicly abandoned their RTG and Cake based platforms (For re-licensing and software manipulation issues that were not so public) and moved to the oft-accused but never convicted Merge gaming platform)) The question is; How can you trust info that was purchased from a source contractually obligated to secure said info?

Ok, here is the situation I have recently encountered. In early May I was playing on a site called PlayersOnly a newly turncoat skin on the repopulated small to medium poker network called Merge Gaming (Home of Carbon Poker, WASSPOKER, PDQ, LOCK, ETC) They had just jumped ship from the Cake Network (My bread n butter; which was tough cookies for me BC industry word was leaning towards this being bad for the cake site with less loose traffic and worse for players migrating to the less than ethical merge platform."

I was playing some mid limit SH FL games when I busted the guy on the Heads UP table I was playing and I decided to kill my aDhD and the wait time til a new player sat in with a lil NBA Pachinko.
[size=18] I was playing and playing when a connection error occurred on the casino platform (It didn't happen on the poker platform) and I had to restart the casino. Well I had hit three of my first 5 balls, 2 in the 5x slot and one in the 15x slot, but from previous Domain Holdings Sites Exp., I knew I would return to the state of my game before I bought the 20 balls that just had been in play when the system malfunctioned (Or ran perfect from their perspective, as I now believe). Boy was I wrong. My acct. had $40 bux left in it.

Well I still had a lil bit of a BR on the poker tables, but my account was a couple hundred US dollars light. Something was fishier than a clambake! So I went to the casino live chat....Pretty quickly I had a casino rep...He wanted to know my issue and he quickly had a reply... "The system had corrupted the "wager review" section and bla bla bla"...likely story..."blablabla"...

I had heard stories and read horrors of Domain Holdings nightmares, so I knew it was time to shift into 'end game' plan. I spoke with the VIP consultant and he told me he would start a withdraw to my 'useMywallet' that night but it couldnt be processed til monday when the financial folks where in... I went to bed with just over $400 in my acct that night.
When I woke up to see if my withdrawal had been started, I was delighted to see only the amount above $400 from the night b4 was in my account, about ten bux. So I went to the cashier to see about my withdraw...

And he said he was sure I was kidding.? "I had lost all of my funds playing NBA plachinko", came his text, "I had even complained last night about a system error, he said, which never happened, he added, and lost every dollar down to the last $9.27 in $40 dollar increments. I dont drink! WTF? I dont sleep'n'cyber wager all simultaneous like issac hayes! WTH? AND i dont take the popular pRx ambiem which is known to cause the former two scenarios with complete memory loss in some patients... I knew they had ripped off 2 hundo plus just hours before...

WOW. I SAID, ur JOKING RIGHT? UNA BROMA GRANDE!??? I was SURE THIS WAS A HUGE JOKE or ...

I knew I was gonna lose it when I talked to the guy on the phone, so I waited a lil, tried not to life tilt, and made the call. He of course could not provide wager history as the system had 'wiped clean' but he could see the losses in my comp handle "losses" section. ten straight (-$40) bets at nba plachinko (Not very freaking likely for those who have never played that game; with 20 balls a bet and $2 wagered on each ball U can do the math but as I said, I started with 3 out of my first 5 balls going into various slots...It more likely to hit a str8 flush in 5 cards (approx 1:72000) than to lose 200 straight shots at nba plachinko. Gosh I tangent a lot, sorry if ur still with me.

I demanded to speak with a supervisor. I knew casinomeister and other watchdogs would laugh if I brought it to them, (BC they told me not to mess with the casino's from DHLtd, to play poker on just a few of the now nearly 40 skins on MERGE, and keep minimal amounts in the BR wallet..." SO after listening to the super's bull snit for 10 min's I went PokerBrat ballistic as if he had just cracked my AA with pock 33 all in pre flop and had the audacity to felt the winning hand after I threw my AA over. If ur not a fan of watching Hellmuth embarrass himself, It was a very uncharacteristic meltdown including many choice pieces of seldom used lexicon.

I calmed a bit after the rep, Mr.J@#$# threatened to hang up and this is where I get to the bottom line... I threatened to place chargebacks with netspend and usemywallet to the exact amount I had been cheated... And there was my mistake...

HE said he would talk to his supervisor and do an account review If I would just hold on the line.

I had 14 accounts on the merge network a.t.m. he put me on hold.

Within 7 days I could log in to 0 of them.

With 10 minutes I was locked out of all 8 Domain Holdings sites I belonged to. A sum of $765 was confiscated by those crooks. Not including the $600 plus that players only took. And excluding the hundreds and thousands of vip points I had amasses on the various DHL merge poker skins.

To be fair, My balances at pokerhost, lock, and reefer poker where all promptly paid. And those skins apologized but seemed reluctant to say anything else less DHL (who I have learned now owns a controlling stake in the Merge Network) choose to scorn them too.

But that is not where these guys ended it. This is where I tie in to the first paragraph. They reported my name to one of the few casino industry "risk management' lists and yesterday, when I tried to deposit at iNetBet, I was not allowed to do so..........I contacted inetbet, and they were unaware the automated system had done so and where gonna turn the security feature off for me, and see if they could get the blackball list to remove me from the list... WE SHALL SEE...I know inetbet will do the right thing, but how many other times will this come up in my future??? Probably quite a few until regulation pushes uniform structure and licensing into effect and excludes all domain holdings sites...

BUT on to the paradox.... A site makes a deal with a client. The client will act according to the TOS, and site among other responsibilities will protect the clients privacy... Isn't it a touch illogical to [size=24]A) Buy info from... and B) TRUST info from.... someone who bought info from somebody who PROMISED to never sell said info? Risk management? or Risk acquisitions? A lesson learned for me and a case study in why regulation will be swell.... Good gosh I go

a lot, tyvm for reading...[/size]

Posted:14.08.2010, 02:33

Ummmm what????

Posted:14.08.2010, 02:43

you dont understand what I mean?

Posted:14.08.2010, 17:11

Very well said, ....You know what they say rolls downhill...
Sounds like it hit you in the face ! If you have trouble
with one casino, they should not be allowed to do that
to a person. I understand blacklisting someone if
they figured out a way to cheat or something, but
over a dispute of your kind no way !!

Posted:14.08.2010, 19:02

Well a little affirmation feels great, but I just got a ruling from the management at inetbet; they will not comment on integrity or lack thereof of Domain Holdings (See cardspike scandal to start and try their blackjack if u need more proof) but they will admit they are sorry to hear that the "risk management suite will not be moved; but usemywallet will remain my only deposit method''

Okay, fine, I am not tripping 'bout it, I just want to make one more point.

Quicktender broke their relationship with the Jazzette Holdings (a white label branch of Domain Holdings) sites and Domain Holdings sites in June. They wont comment as to why, but the forums at CM and elsewhere seem to suggest that too many legitimate complaints were lodged against their slew of crooked sites demanding restitution that Quicktender was losing coin... I just am beside myself that these crooks are allowed to join the info sharing party with these respectable sites, it doesnt make sense.

Posted:14.08.2010, 19:08

Oh yeah, I forgot, I got a ruling from the KGC on my ban from the merge network too. They have been as bold as to admit that at least one of my charges should have been returned to "the client in question". But the last two paragraphs of their honorable (<<--------sarcasm) ruling deals with the fact that a network has the right to forbid any and all individuals it chooses to... So...I guess that's okay anyway, I have a negative ROI on the merge network anyways...

But just more fodder in my anti-KGC arsenal... Does anyone take them seriously, besides their revenue sharing partners the jurisdictional govt. of Quebec?