Poker Players Protest PayPal Information Share with Iovation
Key Takeaways
  • Players have discovered that PayPal is sharing personal information with Iovation and they are protesting at the relationship with a company founded by executives implicated in the UB/AP cheating scandal.
  • Player protests in May led to Iovation being investigated by the Nevada Gaming Control Board and to it losing its contract with Ultimate Poker.

Poker players are protesting ewallet Paypal over reported connections with Iovation, an online fraud detection service that has ties to UltimateBet.

The relationship was first publicized by poker journalist John Mehaffey, who discovered that Iovation was on a PayPal list of “non-exclusive examples of the actual third parties to whom we currently disclose your account information.”

The article has spawned a thread on 2+2, where angered players are encouraging others to complain to Paypal.

The suggested text of one prewritten email states Iovation “was established by the former operators of online poker sites Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. These sites were knowingly operated to commit theft of tens of millions of dollars from their customers.”

Previous player anger led to Nevada online poker entrant Ultimate Poker severing its relationship with the verification company in May this year.

Michael Josem, one of the two players who carried out a forensic investigation that exposed the cheating scandal posted: “People who steal money should be in prison, and leading financial organisations like Paypal should not be trusting them with our personally identifiable information.” He tweeted:

The protests in May led to Iovation being investigated by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Iovation CEO and founder, Greg Pierson, was directly implicated in the UltimateBet cheating scandal and subsequent coverup by taped recordings of conversations made by cheater Russ Hamilton.