Poker Stars toughens up player privacy

[jetset]

POKERSTARS LOWERS THE BOOM ON PLAYER INFORMATION

Major online poker site cites player privacy as main reason for crackdown

The rise in the number of online poker ranking sites, which often give detailed information on the performance, status and profitability of top earning online players has alarmed many interested parties and resulted in a move to protect privacy by the Internet's biggest online poker site, Poker Stars.com.

The "leaderboard" style sites access statistics direct from online gambling companies like Poker Stars, giving users access to leader boards, tournament results, and individual player winnings, reports Cardplayer Magazine this week. Some sites go as far as giving their users the ability to look up the ROI, net winnings, in-the-money finish percentages, and other profitability indicators for every player on Poker Stars and other sites.

The threat to the privacy of individuals is obvious, and Poker Stars has revealed that it felt compelled to reconsider its position regarding access after substantial representations were made to the company by its players. The company sent a cautionary letter to the main tracking sites, which has created something of a furore among those most affected.

The letter explained the situation and the company's responsibility to its players, and laid down a set of rules that will henceforth govern access. These include provisions to prevent the display of player profitability data without that player's express permission.

Any player may choose to completely opt out of having any information about them displayed.

All requests for access must be handled privately and securely without the disclosure of the player’s e-mail address, real name, or other private information. Only the player’s Poker Stars user ID is necessary.

Both the opt-in and opt-out options must be prominently displayed on the main/front page of the Service (at a minimum, a normal-sized link on the front page to a more complete description elsewhere).

There is no “grandfather clause” for existing data. One hundred percent of historical profitability data must be removed from view until such time as a player explicitly opts in.

Any Service Operator found to be in violation of these rules risks having their access to PokerStars’ game client restricted and/or the service impeded, including, but not limited to, the warning of players who access the Service while the PokerStars client is open.

Stephen Winters, manager of Poker Stars game security, told CardPlayer that privacy was the overriding concern in introducing the new policy: "Over the past year or more, we have been collating feedback from our players via e-mail and public forums on the subject of game-play-data privacy. The view of a large number of our players is that they do not wish their ROI and profitability to be displayed in a public or subscription-based website," he said.

"PokerStars management respects the privacy of its players and feels strongly that this data should only be available for players who have explicitly expressed a wish for it to be displayed. If a player wishes to allow his full data set to be displayed, he has to opt into that particular service.

"We have made the “default setting” of our data policy such that only tournament cashes can be displayed for any player. This display of player’s tournament cashes would not reveal any ROI or profitability data. If a player does not even wish this information to be displayed, we are also allowing him to opt out completely.

"The right to privacy protection applies to all players, whether losing or winning, and there are many valid reasons for players not wanting their information to be shown publicly."

[pokeraddict]

Unlike most full time players I actually support Stars on their decision. The real question is whether the dataminers will ignore Star's demands. This came out weeks ago and I do not think anybody has done anything about it. Maybe it just hasn't gone into effect yet.

[GaryWatson]

I got to say I like viewing some of the data but feel it should be on an opt in basis. Stars have my support

[120sam]

Is is possible that Pokerstars have been watching the situation at Absolute Poker unfold and decided to take steps to make sure it can't happen to them?

Where would the case against the cheating players at Absolute be if other players hadn't been able to track their play and reveal how impossible their statistics were?

If there are any such cheating players at Stars now or in the future, they'll be able to cover their tracks by opting out.

I bet Absolute wish they had thought of this first, it would have saved them and their cheating players a whole lot of bother.

[pokeraddict]

Stars still allows Poker Tracker. This is essentially going to stop third parties from tracking player performance for a fee if it is enforced.

[tennis_balls]

it sounds like a bad decision by PokerStars IMHO. if there's one thing that online poker can't have enough of, it's transparency.

[tennis_balls]

i tried to look up some guy on sharkscope tonight and got this:



is this a new thing as a result of the new pokerstars privacy policy?

i'm not currently a member at sharkscope so this was a basic free search

Also, in the pokerstars lobby if you click on "requests" you'll find "information sharing" at the bottom of the drop-down window. I tried clicking on it and it said: "This option is not applicable to your account."