4 ms·

I make no mention of Sagi's background, just his investment choices. Those alone are enough to question the wisdom of supporting any of the businesses with my a

I make no mention of Sagi's background, just his investment choices. Those alone are enough to question the wisdom of supporting any of the businesses with my actual money. Yes, let's have some honesty. He's invested in : Founding Playtech an online gambling outfit, a credit card clearing company for online gambling, Kape, Stucco Media - Search engine marketing, and several mobile advertising companies. Not a list many would associate with either ethics or privacy. Not a list I want to give money to or see succeed. All businesses built on erosion of privacy. Colour me unconvinced seeing a privacy oriented company joining that particular stable. CrossRider was nothing like you imply. It was a BHO platform that injected a dll into the browser to allow easier peddling of malware and adware. Why not mention adware? Let's ignore the malware smokescreen you're trying to launch, with them as innocent victim. A platform putting injected adware on my fucking computer is more than enough. Every anti virus and anti malware platform I'm aware of identified CrossRider as a problem, or flagged its shite as "unwanted program". Not liking that they now have a plan b that is not in an injected adware platform is not "a conspiracy theory". It's simple track record. Given what their first plan did, and how, it'll take considerable effort over considerable time for me to even consider them neutral. They may never reach neutral or "trustworthy" again. No all his other ventures aren't in advertising. They are in advertising and gambling - funny you don't mention gambling - that, for me, is more than enough for choosing a business to rely on for trust and privacy. I don't want to support those sectors. I don't actually want them to exist. I don't actually trust anyone in the SEO, advertising or gambling industries at all, from Google and Ladbrokes down. As they keep doing the opposite of the ethical thing, consistently and repeatedly. If PIA, who have built a decent and (as far as I can see) well deserved reputation, want to hitch their future to that. Well it's their disappointing free choice. My money goes elsewhere.

jeltz 7y ago
Online gambling is not in any way built on eroding privacy. You are free to not like how the industry knowingly makes money of off addicts (no, no matter how much they say they care about responsible gambling they will not stop problem gamblers more than necessary to comply with the law), but in my opinion that is the only ethics problem online gambling has that most other industries do not also share.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Start here (from Simon Davies, the founder of Privacy International): http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/how-the-online-gambling-industry-turns-data-protection-into-a-joke/ http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/how-the-online-g... They are as bad as, and often indistinguishable from, the least salubrious corners of online advertising in their tracking and data gathering. Unfortunately their determination to keep feeding off addicts and keep tracking the whales is what has driven their data abuses. Responsible gambling is 99.9% greenwashing. :)
  - jeltz 7y ago
    As someone who has worked in the online gambling industry I can say that this article is very outdated and on some points misinformed. Things have changed a lot since 2010, and he is wrong even about how things worked back then. > It is routine for sites to demand the transmission of passport and credit card scans, drivers licenses, utility bills and other personal documents. All the available evidence indicates that this information is stored permanently. Only due to the regulating authorities demanding this to prevent money laundering. Collecting and storing this information is just a huge headache to the gambling companies. I know some small companies do it improperly, but if they could chose themselves they would not have stored it at all. I have never heard of any company using this KYC documents for anything other than storing them for possible police investigations. > As a rule, they don’t. It is extremely difficult to close an online gambling account, and in my experience impossible to have your data deleted. This kind of BS with making it hard to close accounts was an issue and has been cracked down on. These days it is very easy to permanently close a gambling account if it is Malta or UK regulated at least. If it is not then you can report them and they can get large fines. It is impossible to get your data deleted though since the casino must keep it for anti-money laundering for a long time. Here I do not know how many actually delete anything once their legal time is up. > [and] fail to notify customers that personal data will be retained permanently even after an arduous process of account closure.” Yeah, I think the sites should be more clear about this. But I do not know of any industry which does this well. Edit: About tracking the whales. No, that is not related to any data abuses as far as I can think of. It would actually be better (from a greedy and selfish point of view) for us if we could delete the gambler's data when they delete their account because then they can register a new account and lose all their money again and we could say we have fulfilled our responsible gambling obligations because there was no way we could correlate the new account with the deleted. Tracking whales is usually mostly done with quite simple BI queries and VIP teams doing work manually. I am not saying data abuses do not happen in the industry, but it is certainly not built around them or close to as bad as e.g. adtech. Actually ordinary online stores seem often to be worse than casinos when it comes to privacy which probably says more about our current society than about casinos.

jeltz 7y ago

Online gambling is not in any way built on eroding privacy. You are free to not like how the industry knowingly makes money of off addicts (no, no matter how much they say they care about responsible gambling they will not stop problem gamblers more than necessary to comply with the law), but in my opinion that is the only ethics problem online gambling has that most other industries do not also share.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Start here (from Simon Davies, the founder of Privacy International): http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/how-the-online-gambling-industry-turns-data-protection-into-a-joke/ http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/how-the-online-g... They are as bad as, and often indistinguishable from, the least salubrious corners of online advertising in their tracking and data gathering. Unfortunately their determination to keep feeding off addicts and keep tracking the whales is what has driven their data abuses. Responsible gambling is 99.9% greenwashing. :)
- jeltz 7y ago
  As someone who has worked in the online gambling industry I can say that this article is very outdated and on some points misinformed. Things have changed a lot since 2010, and he is wrong even about how things worked back then. > It is routine for sites to demand the transmission of passport and credit card scans, drivers licenses, utility bills and other personal documents. All the available evidence indicates that this information is stored permanently. Only due to the regulating authorities demanding this to prevent money laundering. Collecting and storing this information is just a huge headache to the gambling companies. I know some small companies do it improperly, but if they could chose themselves they would not have stored it at all. I have never heard of any company using this KYC documents for anything other than storing them for possible police investigations. > As a rule, they don’t. It is extremely difficult to close an online gambling account, and in my experience impossible to have your data deleted. This kind of BS with making it hard to close accounts was an issue and has been cracked down on. These days it is very easy to permanently close a gambling account if it is Malta or UK regulated at least. If it is not then you can report them and they can get large fines. It is impossible to get your data deleted though since the casino must keep it for anti-money laundering for a long time. Here I do not know how many actually delete anything once their legal time is up. > [and] fail to notify customers that personal data will be retained permanently even after an arduous process of account closure.” Yeah, I think the sites should be more clear about this. But I do not know of any industry which does this well. Edit: About tracking the whales. No, that is not related to any data abuses as far as I can think of. It would actually be better (from a greedy and selfish point of view) for us if we could delete the gambler's data when they delete their account because then they can register a new account and lose all their money again and we could say we have fulfilled our responsible gambling obligations because there was no way we could correlate the new account with the deleted. Tracking whales is usually mostly done with quite simple BI queries and VIP teams doing work manually. I am not saying data abuses do not happen in the industry, but it is certainly not built around them or close to as bad as e.g. adtech. Actually ordinary online stores seem often to be worse than casinos when it comes to privacy which probably says more about our current society than about casinos.