There is no way of telling if you are using these.....they can only take a guess and of course use it to not pay you....MG is quite aware that a lot of players use these but there is nothing they can do about it as it's hard to detect with the technology they have right now. So they allow it
Actually, it's pretty easy to tell if
most people are using these types of programs. They just check your computer's running processes. Most of the major online poker sites. PokerStars is a great example here, make you sign your life away when you play there. The terms and conditions you sign allow them to effectively use built in spyware to view all programs running on your machine. If they suspect you of using banned software, they can just look and find out!
There are of course ways around that, but they are complicated. Not many people opt to explore them, other than the hardcore type who kill for any and every edge. Which, unsurprisingly enough, is the exact type of customer that sites don't want these days and are happy to find any excuse to get rid of. Part of this is because 888 is beholden to profits and shareholders. Any time one of these companies goes public they start squeezing as much margin as they can from every place possible... much to the detriment of customers.
Now, with regard to 888's activities. They are well known for banning players for crazy reason. Back
. It turns out the majority of them were heavy winning players. 888 gave a bunch of excuses but in reality they were just getting rid of winning players to pad their margins.
Just a few months ago 888 banned a huge wave of players, hundreds. It was very murky and lots of excuses were given with no real meat. Even the 888 reps on 2+2 shied away from disclosing much of anything.
. There was widespread denial by players.
It would not surprise me at all to learn that whatever banning is going on here is for a similar reason... that they are looking for excuses to get rid of winning players. People thing that the "regs" are valuable because they create a lot of rake. And to some extent that is true. However, people fail to realize the entirety of the equation. It costs a lot of money to advertise and bring in recreational players to lose that money to the regs. It costs money to process all of those deposits, and of course the withdrawals of the winning reg. The best financial interests of the poker room are served by having a large pool of equally skilled players all churning rake but winning and withdrawing little from the poker economy... and some of those sites, like 888 who has to please it's shareholders, are doing their best to create such an environment.