PartyPoker Installs KB/mouse hooks, and infects your files

[Our House]

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And just the opposite, some posters trust foreign unregulated corporations a bit too much.

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That's where you're mistaken. Party Poker is very much regulated. When you're publicly traded and the most popular poker site on the planet, you have certain obligations. Party is regulated from more different directions than you realize. American regulation isn't what it's cracked up to be. Which brings us to.....

Foreign? Yes, I trust a foreign company like Party. I also trust a foreign company like Mercedes when I drive around. And a foreign company like Toshiba that makes the laptop I'm using right now. As well as other software companies with keyloggers like Skype and Yahoo. To me, these companies aren't foreign; they're world renowned. I trust them all. More than I trust the U.S. government. Which reminds me...didn't our wonderful PRESIDENT just sell our own American ports to terrorists?!?! And you're concerned because this billion dollar poker site isn't regulated in AMERICA?? Interesting...

[ColdCaller]

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That's where you're mistaken. Party Poker is very much regulated. When you're publicly traded and the most popular poker site on the planet, you have certain obligations.

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None of that constitutes "regulation," other than financial rules regulation, which is totally separate from the issue at hand.

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Foreign? Yes, I trust a foreign company like Party. I also trust a foreign company like Mercedes when I drive around. And a foreign company like Toshiba that makes the laptop I'm using right now. As well as other software companies with keyloggers like Skype and Yahoo. To me, these companies aren't foreign; they're world renowned.

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And every single one of them you named has American offices and subjects to American regulation! How about that!

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I trust them all. More than I trust the U.S. government. Which reminds me...didn't our wonderful PRESIDENT just sell our own American ports to terrorists?!?!

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You sir, are an idiot. That is not what happened at all, but I see you've been reading talking points from the local newspaper that claims that this happened.

You will kindly note that Dubai is very Americanized, and that it's actually impossible to block such a free market move of buying private property. If what you are advocating is blocking such a move, then you are hinting at nothing less than economic fascism.

Spare me the history lessons you took a few years ago in public high school, kid. Whatever you heard from your opinion columnist that led you to believe such a ridiculous statement is completely untrue.

[maurile]

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The biggest threats to online poker are collusion and bots

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And politicians. Collusion, bots, and politicians.

I think people should have a choice: they should be able to play at a site that uses screendumps etc. to prevent cheating (e.g., Party), or they should be able to play at a site that doesn't (Stars?).

I'd rather play at a site that does everything it can to prevent collusion. I don't like the fact that other people are trying to subvert my choice by publicizing workarounds that allow people to avoid detection, but I guess there's nothing I can do about it other than voice my displeasure. So consider it voiced: I wish you wouldn't try to take away my freedom to play at a site where I and my opponents are monitored for cheating.

[Our House]

I stopped reading right about here:

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You sir, are an idiot.

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Have a nice day.

[ColdCaller]

Clearly you did.

[Halo7]

PCs are cheap enough these days that the ultimate solution to this problem would be to have one PC for poker and one for general use. This gets rid of most of the potential complaints (except possibly the scanning for competitors products for targeted offers). With monitors so prevalent and cheap these days you can have separate monitors so you can still surf and play, or you can do a simple A/B switch to have one monitor if you don't mix poker and other tasks at one time. Although I wouldn't recommend it for performance reasons, you could even use Citrix/VNC/Remote Desktop to view that Poker PC as a window on your general use PC, while preventing any scanning of the general PC (although they would be able to detect the client of the remote desktop software running on the Poker PC).

Of course this begs the question that we shouldn't have to go to these lengths just to play some online poker, but once you agree to the EULA then caveat emptor.

Halo7

[zyqwert]

I agree about another machine, but you don't have to buy a real machine.
I used VMWare to create a virtual machine for each cardroom.
With vmware I have NAT'd IP addresses for each VM for extra protection. I strip down windows and never use any other software on those machines. In particular I don't browse from the VMs.

Using the vmware snapshot / rollback functionality, a careful person could rollback every day and then even if the worst happened it could only be exploited for a day.

I feel more protected from the sites, and from account hackers / keystroke loggers.

[Terry]

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they should be able to play at a site that uses screendumps etc. to prevent cheating (e.g., Party), or they should be able to play at a site that doesn't (Stars?).

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You fail to mention that Stars caught the cheaters BECAUSE they had already been busted by the PLAYERS at Party.

And, I might mention, cheaters who weren't even sophisticated enough to be using separate machines or VMWare or any such anti-detection measures.

[CountDeMonet]

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What happens when Party software gets on various adware and spyware lists because of this behavior?

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It already is, can't remember which one. Scan I ran recently.