Presumably casinos don't sell customers to rivals, so maybe a list of the spammers would be helpful? I have received spam from:
BingoOnline.com
Casino Rewards
King Dice (from affiliate)
Cirrus
Gold Stream
Slots of Vegas
Cool Cat
Palace of (no) Chance
plus various affiliates
Are these all one group? Is one of the casino's I've signed-up to also in this group?
It is hard to say which of the 4 could have sold your details, but is seems a very strange coincidence indeed that you go quickly from no spam to "full-on" spam soon after signing up at these 4 casinos.
The OFFICIAL line has ALWAYS been that casinos DO NOT SELL ON our details, and that these instances are mere coincidence. Well, there is just so much damn "coincidence" one can take before taking a stand and calling the industry "LIARS" to it's face. They most CERTAINLY believe in the equation "too many coincidences" = FACT when it comes to weeding out fraudulent players. Clearly, THEY show that they believe that above a certain level of coincidences it is OK to call a player LIAR to their face, and confiscate winnings, close accounts, etc - and be deaf to all denials.
So far, the best we have heard from the industry, when the evidence has been just too strong and distinct for "coincidence" to work, is that they then play the "rogue employee" card, and they then launch a (fake?) internal investigation, apologise, and say they have made changes to ensure it never happens again - but naturally it does, some months later, and the whole process of denial, strong evidence, escape clause and fake full investigation has to be done again.
Some while back CR GOT CAUGHT, and was forced to play the "rogue employee" card because the evidence was too strong and specific for "coincidence" to be a plausable explanation.
Once an email address has been sold just the once, control can NEVER be regained since the original seller, even if caught, cannot control what is done by the buyers.
There is a COMPLETE LACK OF REGULATION in this field, casino groups can do what they like, and there is certainly money in it for them. There is SOME regulation in how they treat customers IN THE CASINO, but this does NOT cover what they do with player information. Since this is the internet, they can move from country to country to ensure that what general regulation exists is totally ineffective.
The "jangomail" lot are run from an almost nil regulated haven, and can get away with it, yet it seems odd "coincidence" that GENUINE CR emails and newsletters come from the SAME haven, coincidence, no, duplicate "IP addresses etc" YES, so on the same level of "indicators" that casinos use to determine whether two accounts are "connected" and thus fraudulent, it seems that CR themselves can be said to be complict in this spamming campaign by using "duplicate corporate entiries" in the same way that fraudulent players use "duplicate accounts" with different details in order to avoid detection.
I don't believe ANY amount of reporting as spam etc is going to make much difference, as all that will happen is it will endure that it is more difficult to receive LEGITIMATE Emails. This is ALREADY the case, with some ISPs effectively getting "banned" by internet businessess as being too difficult to work with. AOL is one such ISP that has been "banned" here at Casinomeister, and a notice went up that members either had to deregister AOL supplied email addresses and replace them with ones from an acceptable supplier or have their CM accounts terminated. Reporting spam can only make the problem worse, as ISPs will be tasked with implementing blocking solutions, since it is near impossible to stop the senders. This will lead to ever more INOCCENT domains being blacklisted along with the spammers, and ever more ISPs ending up being "banned" when a valid email address has to be supplied to benefit from a product or service.
CASINO businesses don't care, they are used to having to constantly change domains in their fight with the US and UIGEA, but other sites, such as Casinomeister, are not geared up for this, and do not have the resources to constantly flip from one domain to another to get out of domain blacklists.
The only way forward that MIGHT have an effect is to make the businesses who BENEFIT from the spam JOINTLY LIABLE, and make them have to PROVE they have taken the BEST POSSIBLE measures to prevent reocurrance, and this means INSYANT and NO NONSENSE LOCKING of the accounts of "rogue affiliates" and further the CONFISCATION of back revenue for the length of time it can be shown that SPAM has been used (simple, the send date of the earliest email that is shown to have been SPAM from that affiliate). So far, EVERY TIME a rogue affiliate is identified, all the ever get is "a good talking to" from the affiliate manager, which effectively means "idiot! - do it better next time, and don't get caught again".
Even if they have their affiliate account closed, they KEEP the spoils of their spam campaign, and can simply apply as a "new affiliate" and start from scratch.
It does seem that the spamming has made a step change for the worse this last couple of months, which really is PROOF that current measures simply DO NOT WORK.
