Stars catches a bot and it's........my mom

[teddyFBI]

So my 57 year old mother last year started playing on Stars; just the 2 cent and 5 cent limit tables. According to her, she got an email the other day saying that her account had been suspended for security measures and that Stars support wanted her to send in some log files. After she complied, they told her that they believed she was using a bot, and that her account was being closed (although they let her cash out the little money that she had there.) When she showed me the emails from Jeff at Stars, I was as stunned as was she. The woman can't even spell "bot" let alone know what one is, nor where to find one. She's just a mom. Since I had corresponded once or twice with Lee Jones, I told her that I'd shoot him an email to ask him to personally look into it, which he did, and then sent her another email assuring her that Jeff had personally showed him the "evidence" and it was very damning, and that he was sure she was using a bot, and encouraged her to take her poker business elsewhere.

I know poker sites are very proprietary about their 'bot detection' procedures, as well they should be -- after all, I wouldn't want bot-makers knowing what procedures they have to evade. But this seems a little heavy-handed, no? They won't really tell her why the 'evidence' is so 'damning' -- she is just a hopelessly tech-retarded mom...I had to walk her step-by-step when she wanted to set up a free hotmail account. I tried explaining Pokertracker to her once, and she had no clue what I was talking about. I watched her play once, and she multi-tabled like 6 tables, but her eyes are so bad that she used the lowest screen resolution that only fits 1 table on the screen, so all 6 overlapped nearly completely, and she just acted whenever a screen would pop up, having no clue what the action had been in the hand to that point. It would have been very funny if it weren't my mom -- which made it kind of pathetic. I would stake my entire bankroll on her not doing anything untoward. At this point, it doesn't really matter, because Lee has told her that her business (small though I guess it was) is not welcome at Stars...I suppose it's just a little frightening to think of the implications for the rest of us...to one day wake up and be accused of running a bot when nothing of that sort was going on. Has anyone else been similarly falsely accused?

(I understand that people hear "mother"/"sister"/"brother"/"friend" and probably think something sinister e.g. gnoming is going on, especially in the wake of the ZeeJusting MTT multi-accounting scandal) but I assure you this is completely on the level. She is just a 57 year old mom who plays an hour or so of microlimit poker each day. She's never even played a tournament, that I know of, and I'm sure she's the only one logging on from her computer; in fact I don't think anyone else in the household even plays poker at all (I haven't lived with the parents in 10 years, and don't play when I visit their place.) I racked my brain to try and think of what on earth could have triggered a Stars investigation, but I'm drawing a complete blank. I know my post count on these forums doesn't mean all that much, but at least it might help give me a little credibility...the few people I met on the PPM cruise also might be able to vouch for the fact that I'm pretty normal.)