NEW PRIVACY SCANDAL BUILDING AT ULTIMATE BET?
Sunday December 4,2011 : Allegations that large amounts of data have been leaked
Another privacy scandal could be about to hit the online poker industry, according to a report just up at the Subject: Poker information website operated by Noah Stephens-Davidowitz.
The report claims that a persons or persons unknown has published on the internet a significant amount of data from Ultimate Bet, an online poker site in the Cereus group, which was recently laid low by the US enforcement actions associated with Black Friday.
For obvious reasons the location and title of this website has not been divulged, but Subject Poker and numerous twoplustwo forum members verify that the site and its apparently shockingly accurate information exists.
The poker information website estimates that roughly 3.5 million accounts are affected, although UB's sister site Absolute Poker is not included in the illegal disclosures.
According to Subject:Poker, the leaked data includes the following:
•Full name
•Screen name
•E-mail address
•Phone number
•Mailing address
•Account balance
•IP address
•Deposit methods used (e.g. “echeck”)
•Birth date
•Account number (unique identifier for UB accounts, not bank accounts numbers)
•VIP status
•Affiliate status
•Blacklist status
Through comparison with their own personal data, several sources have been able to verify the accuracy of some of the entries, Poker:Subject notes, reporting:
"The data is organized by country, with roughly 2 million US accounts, 319,000 Canadian accounts, 137,000 UK accounts, and roughly 1 million accounts from other countries. The data contains over a dozen columns in addition to those listed above, many of which we’ve been unable to identify."
Fortunately, it appears that financial information other than deposit methods and account balances does not appear to be included.
The motivation for the publication of what must clearly be sensitive commercial and private information has not been established.
We has requested a comment from Ultimate Bet, but when no response has been received by press time.
