7 ms·

Start here (from Simon Davies, the founder of Privacy International): http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/how-the-online-gambling-industry-turns-data-pr

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As someone who has worked in the online gambling industry I can say that this article is very outdated and on some points misinformed.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.
- bjourne 7y ago
  What you're forgetting to mention is that none of the "improvements" is due to the industry itself. ALL of it has come from government regulation and threats from legislators to ban online gambling unless the casinos clean up their act.
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    While this fact surely deserves to be mentioned, I think plenty of companies make good PR off complying with legally mandated measures. Doing something good is doing something good, even if you don't want to do it.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    Kinda yes, kinda no. While the user account locking and several other things only happened due to regulators there are other similar issues which the industry fixed itself (e.g. intentionally delaying withdrawals which regulators did not give a fuck about but after one company offered it everyone had to) and reducing the number of sensitive documents necessary to collect (the regulators do not give a fuck about user privacy).
- dbuder 7y ago
  Online gambling is built on the pile of skulls adtech provides.
- rhizome 7y ago
  >Only due to the regulating authorities demanding this to prevent money laundering Authorities demand tracking/ID info for users because the industry declines to make laundering impossible on their platforms.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    How would you make money laundering impossible? If we could we would. Money launders are shitty customers who mostly just rack up tons of transaction fees for us which their losses just barely pay for.

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.

bjourne 7y ago
What you're forgetting to mention is that none of the "improvements" is due to the industry itself. ALL of it has come from government regulation and threats from legislators to ban online gambling unless the casinos clean up their act.
- JadeNB 7y ago
  While this fact surely deserves to be mentioned, I think plenty of companies make good PR off complying with legally mandated measures. Doing something good is doing something good, even if you don't want to do it.
- jeltz 7y ago
  Kinda yes, kinda no. While the user account locking and several other things only happened due to regulators there are other similar issues which the industry fixed itself (e.g. intentionally delaying withdrawals which regulators did not give a fuck about but after one company offered it everyone had to) and reducing the number of sensitive documents necessary to collect (the regulators do not give a fuck about user privacy).
dbuder 7y ago
Online gambling is built on the pile of skulls adtech provides.
rhizome 7y ago
>Only due to the regulating authorities demanding this to prevent money laundering Authorities demand tracking/ID info for users because the industry declines to make laundering impossible on their platforms.
- jeltz 7y ago
  How would you make money laundering impossible? If we could we would. Money launders are shitty customers who mostly just rack up tons of transaction fees for us which their losses just barely pay for.