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Provincial Governments Warned Against Cyber Criminals

Posted on August 23rd, 2010

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Cheaters, criminal gangs and hackers are only some of the potential dangers provincial governments will have to face when they come up with their own online gambling sites, according to online gaming experts. The fact that there are a number of criminals that focus on gambling sites should be seriously taken into consideration by operators of the upcoming government-operated sites. This warning comes very timely as a number of Canadian provinces have been clamoring to makie online gambling available to their residents. Most recently, after a string of delays, British Columbia finally started operations of its online gambling site. BC became the first province to launch its internet casino operation in July, but the site immediately shut down operations within hours after the launch, with operators citing “load issues” as the cause of the postponement of full-blast operations.

At Thursday’s launch, BC Lottery Corporation experienced more glitches, but the website resumed operations in the early hours of Friday. The province’s online gaming site offers slots, blackjack, video poker and other casino games. With the glitches, BCC says it will continue investigating the cause, which it attributes to “date crossover” that allowed unauthorized users to access 134 authorized player accounts. John McMullan, a criminologist of Halifax’s St. Mary’s University in Halifax hopes that the public will gain access to any report of the BCLC, saying that these reports will shed some light on the issues. He said that he would like to know what software issues may have caused the vulnerabilities of the launch. Seamus Gordon, spokesperson for the BCLC claimed that they still have not found evidence of technical sabotage or hacking that occurred in the provincial gaming site, and attributed the recent delays to a defect on the server.

McMullan, as well as other onlookers to the government online gambling venture claim that since the government is a rookie in this field, they are vulnerable and has likely become victim of criminal gangs that make the cyber world their primary target. These gangs are known to very advanced and capable in technology. McMullan calls these projects by the government as risks, and that issues faced by currently operating private gambling sites will be the same issues to be faced by the government. McMullan implied that since it is virtually impossible to build a gambling site that is free of crime, it would be impossible for the government to think that their site will be immune to such. He stressed the importance of having advanced technologies and safeguards to protect the players especially that the provincial governments are new “players” in this field of online casino gaming,

While BC is the only province that operates a casino site, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario are already having their online gambling projects on fast track, while Nova Scotia is toying on the possibility as well. McMullan also warned against cheaters who utilize advanced technology to win big in online gambling sites. Some cheaters are known to use special software that does a variety of things, including but not limited to: helping them play, calculating the odds with competitors not suspecting anything at all and letting an autopilot play for them as a stand-in while they play in other sites or tables, allowing them more chances of winning. A lot of industry observers fear that the governments do not have the expertise to keep up with these sophisticated criminals.

These programs can cause the government a lot, as evidenced in a controversy that involved one of the largest online gambling sites in the world. PokerStars.com in a recent development had to pay players nearly $2 million after discovering several Chinese players conspiring to fix Texas hold ‘em poker games. After this scheme was uncovered, PokerStars had to refund millions of dollars to players. One advantage that observers say about government websites is the process of registering an account. For example, in order to have an account in online gambling site for British Columbia, a player must be aged 19 or above and must be a resident of the province. This would allow for easier tracing in case something fishy is to be uncovered.