Spam or not?

[vinylweatherman]

Hi all,

I am not sure why you say you are not getting responses to your emails?
That is a bit concerning.

I've take the header (thanks) and sent it to our affiliate manager.

I assure you we do not promote or endorse this kind or spam.
I am always available on this site and will help out anyone who has issues.

These emails cause problems for us as a group for numberous reasons.
1) People don't like the smap
2) Our agents get angry players who haven't seen terms and conditions etc.

I hope you guys all know us better than this

I'll find out who this and and get it sorted.

Kind regards,

Darran

Whoever this is, they have stepped up their spamming because of the $1000 free element of the offer.
You certainly will get angry players as often these spams bypass your website and lead to a dummy "spin palace" site where the entire thing is one clickable direct download. It is not just that players don't read the T & C, it is rendered impossible if they click through on the mailer. The players most likely to fall victim are the 60% who don't visit forums, including those who here in the UK connect (mistakenly) these voluminous mailers with the recent liberalisation of the gaming laws which now cater for online poker and casinos.

I find it hard to believe that you cannot simply freeze the affiliate accounts whose tag is connected to these mailers, and then invite them to explain, the lack of payment will get them to open a dialogue & hopefully clean up their act. If these are not affiliates, but mass marketing companies, one has to wonder WHO employed them in the first place!
The Palace Group have been promoted a disproportionate amount of times in recent spams of this nature, although one or two have been for other casinos, mainly Grand Prive and Roxy Palace.

To derive the tag involved (if not clear from the link).
Install casino through spam links, then inspect the top registry key for the casino, the data value "cookie" contains a string relating to the returned tag upon account registration. If downloaded directly this value is "DEFAULT". It appears only to be used at registration, and has no use afte that. Reinstalling casino can wipe this value, but again makes no difference to the original affiliate's return. The new (read "pain in the a***") MG download hinderer with embedded registration may bypass this method of identifying the affiliate tag responsible.
Looking through the headers may not find the original culprit, as on some occasions I seem to get spammed from my own E-mail address!!!!



Here is how one batch of these have been done:-
SOMEONE has a contract with this lot to mass market Spin Palace with the $1000 free banner.
While they have an opt out link, I have to wonder how I first opted in to what they call this "newsletter".

[Matthew23]

An example of what i've been getting

"Click here" links to www.bigrubywinners69.com

[vinylweatherman]

Odd, that just redirects to the main Palace Group website. How on earth does a spammer get value for this, and how even would a marketing company get tagged such that Palace Group would know which campaign succeded in getting the visit.

The only group I can see benefitting would be Palace Group themselves, bypassing affiliates and not having to part with the 20% to 30% commission.

Would be worth seeing who owns the redirect site, and what it actually does while redirecting.

[AussieDave]

I am extremely disappointed that the otherwise reputable Palace Group allow their casinos to be marketed in this undesirable way

I have written to them once or twice, but no response of course.

I was discussing this a few days ago, more so about reputable MG casinos in general. I think the main issue is that the majority of affiliate programs don't veto their sign-ups.

From what I can tell a high % of these spammers don't have websites or if they do add a url to their sign-up they're not active.

The old timer webmasters will remember that it used to cost $140US to register a .com; .net; .org and the only place you could do that was at Networksolutions.com (now netsol). Hence these days spammers can afford to throw away domains when they're paying maybe $5 or $6 bucks for each domain.

The spam that annoys me is those that have now taken to sending images instead of text. That's making it really hard to be detected by spam filters. Even my servers spam filtering starts to splutter when hit with these spam emails.

Apart from that there seems to be a high majority of spam coming out of china. Even with full header info and other information it's next to impossible to get this stopped. Unless you know some colourful Mandarin, even the I think your pushing it!

For any newbies out there if you get this stuff don't click on the un-subscribe link, this only confirms your email addy.

I'd suggest getting a spam filter program hooked up to your mail client. Mailwasher has a free version and it's pretty effective.

[AussieDave]

An example of what i've been getting

"Click here" links to www.bigrubywinners69.com

Hmmm now that's rather interesting.

I did a whois on the domain but its using a proxy to hide its owners identity. So I then tried to find how many other domains are on the server and found these:

Bigcabaretwinners.net
Bigrubywinners.net
Bigrubywinners55.com

The reason no tagging or tracking seems to be taking place is that bigrubywinners69.com is most probably owned by Palace Group, that's if you take into consideration the following, I'll leave the joining of dots up to you.

Domain name: bigcabaretwinners.net

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, BELIZE 1000
BZ

-----------------------------

Domain name: bigrubywinners.net

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, BELIZE 1000
BZ

---------------------------------



Domain name: thepalacegroup.com

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, 1000
BZ

------------------------------

What really get up my nose is this casino's aff program wagershare.com (like most) state they hold a zero tolerance to spam. I can't think of any other reason why you'd do it from bogus domains apart from wanting to make it LOOK like it's coming from a spammer.

In which case the spammer gets blamed with purchasing email lists and what not. While the casino either registers another domain or 50, or just starts using another domain in their spam arsenal and repeats the process.

[vinylweatherman]

Hmmm now that's rather interesting.

I did a whois on the domain but its using a proxy to hide its owners identity. So I then tried to find how many other domains are on the server and found these:

Bigcabaretwinners.net
Bigrubywinners.net
Bigrubywinners55.com

The reason no tagging or tracking seems to be taking place is that bigrubywinners69.com is most probably owned by Palace Group, that's if you take into consideration the following, I'll leave the joining of dots up to you.

Domain name: bigcabaretwinners.net

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, BELIZE 1000
BZ

-----------------------------

Domain name: bigrubywinners.net

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, BELIZE 1000
BZ

---------------------------------



Domain name: thepalacegroup.com

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, 1000
BZ

------------------------------

What really get up my nose is this casino's aff program wagershare.com (like most) state they hold a zero tolerance to spam. I can't think of any other reason why you'd do it from bogus domains apart from wanting to make it LOOK like it's coming from a spammer.

In which case the spammer gets blamed with purchasing email lists and what not. While the casino either registers another domain or 50, or just starts using another domain in their spam arsenal and repeats the process.

This looks incredibly BAD for the Palace Group. That Driftwood bay address looks like the same address involved with the Fortune Lounge spam. Another driftwood bay address handles the sending of promotional mailers to current casino customers of a large number of MG groups, including Fortune Lounge and Jackpot Factory.

Perhaps the big casino groups are more involved than they want us to believe, and this might explain their "soft" approach to getting this spam stopped. It would also explain the lack of tagging, which for an affiliate spammer would be pointless (no commission).

Let's see what the rep has to say about these latest findings and theories.

[lojo]

If it is unsolicited, it is spam.

[vinylweatherman]

This looks incredibly BAD for the Palace Group. That Driftwood bay address looks like the same address involved with the Fortune Lounge spam. Another driftwood bay address handles the sending of promotional mailers to current casino customers of a large number of MG groups, including Fortune Lounge and Jackpot Factory.

I have done some further checking from my Promotions. I have one from Jackpot Factory, and all their marketing is handled through SquareIt, and guess where THEY are?

SquareIt Ltd., 1934 Driftwood Bay, Belize, BZ, Central America

Same place as the proxy registrant for Palace Groups main website:-

Domain name: thepalacegroup.com

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, 1000
BZ

Same place too as the proxy registant for the website pointed to from the SPAM for Palace Group, whic according to their CS is " a rogue affiliate(s) out of our control"

Domain name: bigrubywinners.net

Registrant Contact:
Domain Escrow Services Limited
Domain Administrator (Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by DomainTools.com)
+44.7624496408
Fax: +44.1624617456
1934 Driftwood Bay
Belize City, BELIZE 1000
BZ

It is clear that both the incessant spamming and LEGITIMATE casino promotional material come FROM THE SAME PEOPLE - a firm of marketing agents for a large number of online casinos, including Jackpot Factory, Fortune Lounge, and, less obviously (they handle their website), Palace Group.

All this suggests this spamming is an "inside job", and also explains where they may have got their mailing lists from (sharing between their functions for their different clients, both legitimate mailers & spammers).

We will continue to see an increase in this spam while "1934 Driftwood Bay Ltd" have access to our details given to them from the big casino groups for the purpose of bulk mailing us our legitimate promotions.
Either spammers are separate clients who are being allowed access to bulk mailing lists of ACTIVE casino players courtesy of their legitimate mailing arm, or both the spammers and the casinos are the SAME client of "1934 Driftwood Bay Ltd".
Being based in Belize, with proxy domain registration protection & Belize secretive company arrangements, means they can do this without real fear of recriminations (until, perhaps, now).

This looks like the Fortune Lounge spamming problem all over again!

[Matthew23]

This looks incredibly BAD for the Palace Group.

Let's see what the rep has to say about these latest findings and theories.

The rep has been active for the last two weeks but is choosing not to reply to this thread.

[Palace Group]

Hi,

Matthew, I assure you I am not ignoring the post.

As mentioned I am busy with the affilaite manager who wants to get the full story before posting to you all.
I would love to say it will be in a day but this can take a bit of time.

One thing we would never do is ignore players or their concerns.

Thanks,

Darran