PartyPoker Installs KB/mouse hooks, and infects your files

[Our House]

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Do you really trust an offshore and unregulated gambling site (with a history of screwing over their customers and business partners) to never find alternative uses for the data they pull down?

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Hmmmm. How innocent were their 'business partners' in that whole ordeal? Think along those lines and tell me if you really believe Party was the one doing the screwing.

[SamIAm]

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What precisely are they going to take? Go snooping through my documents for sensitive business files? Read someone's diary or emails? Have a look at your illegal MP3 collection and notify RIAA? Get my bank details and steal money? Party Poker aren't idiots, they're making a ton of money from rake and they'll do nothing to jeopardize their business for less than 1/2 a day's worth of rake. Their client wouldn't even be capable of doing most of these things.

[/ QUOTE ]Of course it isn't company policy to sell your data. Duh. But they have bunches of employees that I would rather not have constant screen-shots and keylogs of my computer.

You ever login to Neteller while the Party client is running? Better hope the employee reading the incoming data doesn't leave the company soon, or you're out 1 Bankroll.
-Sam

[Leader]

Good post. Don't listen to the haters.

[ColdCaller]

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Good post. Don't listen to the haters.

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Heh, don't worry. I have long learned to drone out the logic that "information is a weapon." I don't believe in thought crimes.

[PlasticHat]

Good job ColdCaller.
It sure is a bit concerning the level of logging these Poker clients do. And the inevitable argument "You have nothing to hide, do you?" makes me sad.
Imagine Party Poker scanning your computer for other poker clients to profile you for targeted offers? That would be entirely possible. Imagine their intentions are good but they have poor data security of the collected data. They aren’t exactly regulated in that respect.

I made a quick trace of the API calls from my Bet&Win client (BossMedia). Within one second of its start, it had detected an expired trial version of PokerOffice on my computer and it tried to hook one of the PokerOffice DLLs (but failed as PokerOffice was not running).
As far as I know PokerOffice is not a banned program on Bet&Win so I can only wonder why it tries to do that (if it indeed is banned, I stand corrected).

I think I will do a more careful examination of the poker clients I am running and report back if I find anything mysterious.

[samster]

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I trust them 100% to not sell my data.

What precisely are they going to take? Go snooping through my documents for sensitive business files? Read someone's diary or emails? Have a look at your illegal MP3 collection and notify RIAA? Get my bank details and steal money? Party Poker aren't idiots, they're making a ton of money from rake and they'll do nothing to jeopardize their business for less than 1/2 a day's worth of rake. Their client wouldn't even be capable of doing most of these things.

The biggest threats to online poker are collusion and bots, and I'm glad that Party takes aggressive steps to stamp them out. Publishing little known information about how to cirucmvent it is just plain dumb IMO.

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We should put closed circuit cameras in all of our houses while we play on party poker, to really catch multi-accounters. Maybe the govt could take a hint from party poker and use the cameras too, to catch terrorists that hide in suburbia.

What do you have to hide?

/sarcasm
//no, I'd like a response too

[ColdCaller]

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Good job ColdCaller.
It sure is a bit concerning the level of logging these Poker clients do. And the inevitable argument "You have nothing to hide, do you?" makes me sad.

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I agree completely. Authorizing Party to be the judge, jury, and executioner with full access to your data without full disclosure on the methods is pretty arrogant, if you ask me.

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Imagine Party Poker scanning your computer for other poker clients to profile you for targeted offers? That would be entirely possible. Imagine their intentions are good but they have poor data security of the collected data. They aren’t exactly regulated in that respect.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good points, indeed. You can go on and on, of course.

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I made a quick trace of the API calls from my Bet&Win client (BossMedia). Within one second of its start, it had detected an expired trial version of PokerOffice on my computer and it tried to hook one of the PokerOffice DLLs (but failed as PokerOffice was not running).
As far as I know PokerOffice is not a banned program on Bet&Win so I can only wonder why it tries to do that (if it indeed is banned, I stand corrected).

I think I will do a more careful examination of the poker clients I am running and report back if I find anything mysterious.

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Wow, very interesting.

Yeah, it's certainly worth looking into.

[Alobar]

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What precisely are they going to take? Go snooping through my documents for sensitive business files? Read someone's diary or emails? Have a look at your illegal MP3 collection and notify RIAA? Get my bank details and steal money? Party Poker aren't idiots, they're making a ton of money from rake and they'll do nothing to jeopardize their business for less than 1/2 a day's worth of rake. Their client wouldn't even be capable of doing most of these things.

[/ QUOTE ]Of course it isn't company policy to sell your data. Duh. But they have bunches of employees that I would rather not have constant screen-shots and keylogs of my computer.

You ever login to Neteller while the Party client is running? Better hope the employee reading the incoming data doesn't leave the company soon, or you're out 1 Bankroll.
-Sam

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So you never use your credit card or write checks for anything then either? Cuz everytime you do, a number of different min wage slaves have easy access to it.

My friend just started a new job at bank of america as some low level data entry slave, he came home all excited because in going over the thousands of documents a day he goes over, he spotted several very famous actors, he could see thier address, phone number, social security, bank account numbers, and even what they wrote checks for. Guess you donk keep any money in a bank either?

I get what you are saying, and you have a point, I just dont think its a very good one, and the pros here far far outweigh the cons.

Personally, Id be happy if party put a stop to people being able to circumvent their counter measures, you "agreed" to it by signing up, so hopefully they will actually enforce it .

[Arnfinn Madsen]

There are also workarounds Party can use to go around this program, as there are ways to avoid those workarounds as well, etc. etc.. This cat and mouse-game goes on. I root for Party to win, since I think we are better off the more info they manage to gather, as cheating is a bigger risk than Party misusing data.

[d-baggery]

ColdCaller,

Interesting topic, however I would like to know why you don't want them to monitor your keyboard or mouse movements? Just out of principal? I'm all for protecting my computer, and this does seem like an intrusion in theory, but in practice I don't see the problem.