Quote:
Originally Posted by FTPDoug
Hi all,
I'd like to address some of the issues/concerns that have been raised in this thread:
1. Full Tilt has never sold or given personal information to a third party unless explicity allowed (the one case I can think of was our PPA membership drive where users opted in and allowed us to pass along their details to the PPA).
2. Given that the information wasn't acquired in any official capacity, we're investigating how this may have happened. If it did come from us in any way, we take this as a very serious breach of security and will do whatever we can to ensure it doesn't happen again.
3. We take the security of everyone's personal information seriously. Only a select few people have access to our database (including the database team, some business analysts, and some marketing people). Our customer support can obviously access a player's details one player at a time, but it would take years to cull a big list. That said, it does look like something happened here and we're looking at every possibility.
4. As far as our password policy that MicroBob brought up: Our system has been set up to make it impossible for anyone, including senior management, employees, customer support, consultants or anyone else to access passwords. The feature simply doesn't exist. If you forget your password you have to request a new one. Customer support will never ask anyone for their password.
5. This doesn't pertain to the current situation since it looks like it was snail mail addresses, but some spammers actually grab screen names from the game itself and just spam ftpscreenname@yahoo/gmail/hotmail.com hoping it hits. I'd recommend never using your in game name as your email address.
Let me apologize to everyone that this happened to. We're actively trying to figure out what happened and how, and if we find any pertinent information I will post an update.
Doug
Doug,
Thank you for the above candor.
Since you were willing to go there, I have a more politically sensitive question that you may not be able to answer because of the politics.
The highest games on FT often still have players playing under multiple accounts. Several of us who play in these games regularly approached Howard about a few issues. Among the issues were allowing players to play under different names (of course these are only a hand full of pros), checking IP addresses in these games, and a general feeling that when there are one or two players we don't know in the games, without added security makes us uncomfortable. Howard's response was "then don't play in the games".
I plan on having a private discussion with him about this. However, there are several key points;
1. These games have millions of dollars moving through them. They are ripe for cheating. They help attract players to Fulltilt - people want to watch us. FT should want to protect them and take our concerns seriously.
2. In ALL games fulltilt should want the highest level of security. FT already had one public cheating scandal. Protecting the integrity of ALL games on the site is mandatory to protect it's billion dollar business. Yet, a cavalier attitude seems to be developing about security and therefore the integrity of the games.
What extra steps is FT doing to protect their business and the games?
Thank you.