PPA Privacy Policy

[ECDub]

I was not sure if this was the place to post this, but it does seem relevant to the "defend poker" threads in here. I was going to join one of those PPA tournaments on PokerStars and after reviewing the conditions, you are giving PokerStars permission to send your name, date of birth, home address and e-mail address to the PPA. I went to the PPA site and their Privacy policy seems somewhat shady.

The policy states they may use your private information for contacting you or for marketing purposes. I wonder what marketing purposes they need to use our private information for? It states "PPA does not currently provide members or non-members with a choice for opting out of our collection of information about you" followed by the statement "The Personal Information that PPA collects about you is not currently accessible to you."

It just seems to me that having the name, address, phone number, date of birth, etc. of thousands of American poker players would be valuable for someone to get their hands on. You might think your information is secure, but they then mention "The secure servers are not generally accessible by unauthorized third parties, but could become accessible in the event of a security breach."

Anyway, the privacy policy doesn't seem to leave me feeling my information will be used the way I would like or that my information would be safe. I have mentioned this to a few other people who agreed. The address to the PPA Privacy Policy is http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/privacy.html if anyone wants to read it themselves. I would like to see if anyone else had an opinion.

[IndyFish]

I also read that on PokerStars, and decided not to play the tournament for that reason. My state DOES have laws against internet gambling already, and I prefer that the PPA not hand out my name and address to anyone. Maybe I'm just paranoid. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] I also tend to suck at NL, so it wasn't that difficult a decision...

[ECDub]

Indy, that was my fear as well. Those $5k added tournaments are enticing, but if you got knocked out without making some decent money, you've lost all your private information. If the government demanded that information, it doesn't look like the PPA would prevent them from getting it. They state clearly that they would give up your information "to comply with legal, regulatory or administrative requirements of any governmental authorities."

[PPA President]

First let me say that this information statement is very standard. We will not disclose this information to anyone. The partners that provide this information to the PPA based upon your agreement, is vitally concerned about the use of this information. We use this information to target political actions on a regional basis. DOB is important as we are interested in voters. E-mail for electronic notification. Address for District and State.
We may make offers of other services that may be of interest, negotiated health insurance for paid members, discounts negotiated on behalf of PPA members. We are not a commercial site; we are not for profit, so our desire would be to provide services to our members that we can obtain on a discounted basis, based upon an organization of over 110K.
The PPA is not an affiliated marketing company.

Believe me, we would never sell this list, or share this with the government.

We have the best information security in place that we can put in place, but this is a standard disclaimer, as no one can ensure 100% security, including Microsoft, Sun, etc.
Regards,
Michael

[gila]

This is very bad timing, but, where is my PPA t-shirt I was promised when becoming a member?

[PPA President]

e-mail: e-mail@pokerplayersalliance.org
Jason our customer support rep will follow up with you.

[BruinEric]

[ QUOTE ]
This is very bad timing, but, where is my PPA t-shirt I was promised when becoming a member?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, me too! Ty for the e-mail addr.

[cowboy.up]

Took me just under 2 1/2 weeks to get mine. They actually are pretty decent too.

[ubercuber]

[ QUOTE ]
First let me say that this information statement is very standard. We will not disclose this information to anyone. The partners that provide this information to the PPA based upon your agreement, is vitally concerned about the use of this information. We use this information to target political actions on a regional basis. DOB is important as we are interested in voters. E-mail for electronic notification. Address for District and State.
We may make offers of other services that may be of interest, negotiated health insurance for paid members, discounts negotiated on behalf of PPA members. We are not a commercial site; we are not for profit, so our desire would be to provide services to our members that we can obtain on a discounted basis, based upon an organization of over 110K.
The PPA is not an affiliated marketing company.

Believe me, we would never sell this list, or share this with the government.

We have the best information security in place that we can put in place, but this is a standard disclaimer, as no one can ensure 100% security, including Microsoft, Sun, etc.
Regards,
Michael

[/ QUOTE ]

This sounds great. Keep up the good work and thank you.

[ECDub]

Michael,
Thanks for the response. I believe that the PPA would not intentionally do anything that would jeopardize the members. Younger people may not care as much as their address might be college dorms or apartments, but people with jobs and children at home might not like the idea that someone could walk right up to their doorstep and question their online activity.

While you state in your post that "...we would never sell this list, or share this with the government", your privacy policy does state you would indeed give up private information "to comply with legal, regulatory or administrative requirements of any governmental authorities." If the U.S. government said that all your members are breaking the law and get a court order or whatever to obtain the list of members, everyone's information would be released. I don't know how realistic that scenario is or how it might work, but it is a legitimate concern based on how the privacy policy is worded right now.

Obviously, I am not worried that the government would do a mass arrest of 110K members, but they could monitor and keep a record of it that could come back on us later somehow.

Anyway, I wasn't intending to badmouth the PPA or anything, just the privacy policy. I appreciate the effort that is being put forth the legalize online poker. I wish you the best of luck.