Have Any Casino Gambling Companies Been Hit with a Recent Breech of Security?
Within the past two weeks, I’ve been bombarded with several e-mails and even a few cold calls on my cell phone from “marketers” offering to sell me lists of active casino gamblers and poker players. I estimate the number of e-mails received at about 12-15. I’ve counted four phone calls (three left messages).
What I want to know is this: What in the hell is going on? Why is this happening? Can someone explain?
Here’s some background information. I’ve worked in the casino and poker sector for nearly two decades. I’ve received quite a few pestering solicitations in the past. Whether my employer was Binion’s Horseshoe, PokerStars.com, Caesars Entertainment, World Series of Poker, or “Poker Night in America” TV, getting pitched constantly just goes with the territory. However, up to this point, offers to sell me what’s apparently privileged information have been sporadic. I’ve generally ignored blind inquiries, usually boiler-plated texts offering to provide information that should be kept private.
I didn’t pay much attention to the e-mails or phone calls, at first. But after a while, I sensed something might be amiss. Why would I suddenly be receiving all these solicitations at once, from a variety of different sources, including marketing firms that seem legitimate? What happened?
I presume I’m just one of the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of public relations and marketing professionals who have received the exact same thing. Most of the time, we ignore spam. Everyone’s way too busy to track down the story behind what could be a breach of security, somewhere, by someone. Especially me. I trash the junk.
In this case, however, after seeing so many inquiries, I did follow up with one of the e-mails and ask a few questions. Almost immediately, a representative from the marketing company responded in writing, asking to know more about my “business needs.” Then, my brief investigation hit a wall. Unfortunately, my name is kinda’ out there (easy to Google), so once I started asking questions about the source of the materials, and wanted to know exactly where his company obtained things like names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, and private data on the gambling habits of customers, he pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth.
Perhaps there’s not much here to worry about. Maybe I’m overreacting. We all get hit with spam all the time. However, something that does seem odd that all of the sudden, I’ve been hit with so many marketers eager to sell me information that probably doesn’t belong to them. How would some outside entity obtain customer data, presumably on vast sums of casino gamblers and poker players? Has one of the major operators been hacked?
Question: Has anyone else in the casino business experienced this?
I’m not trying to be an alarmist. However, with the recent hacking of at least one major adult-oriented website, not to mention computers at the highest levels of government, I do think it’s prudent to ask, what’s going on here, and put out a feeler asking if anyone else has been blindly pitched.
If you have any comments, please post them here, on Facebook, or you can e-mail me privately:
nolandalla@gmail.com
I actually am very interested to hear the outcome of your “snooping”. Going into Cybersecurity, and knowing that a lot of large companies (banks, casinos, and even the Navy) are still running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, there really could be a LOT to worry about from that aspect.
I haven’t received the same sort of traffic, if that means anything. However, purely speculating here, while a hack is possible, it seems to me to be far more likely that somebody either took this information with them when they left company who had it where they used to work, or someone acquired this information when acquiring, either as a sale or in liquidation, this information from a business who had it. Either way, it’s spam, since you don’t (appear to) have a prior business relationship with the company who contacted you.
I doubt this will get anywhere, but if you’re curious as to it’s origin, next time they contact you, ask, “I’m interested in your services, but I’m not willing to go any further until you let me know where you got this list, and, specifically, how my name and contact information came to your attention?” If they refuse or say they’re not privy to that information, you say, “deal breaker,” but don’t hang up. You probably won’t get the information you seek, but you never know.