It's abiguous enough that I won't accuse Stars of lying; it depends on what "this feature" means. It certainly could be interpreted to mean the entire "IP snooping feature" but it could also be interpreted to meant the "looking for the Sharkscope IP" feature. So I'm going to say misleading but not a flat out lie. Bad form on their part though. They should have cleartly stated what they meant.

Soah coming off really good in this thread.

guess they get watch the same porn i do

lucky them

There's probably a way to put him ignore if you really wanted to by modifying your browser code (assuming it is open source). There may for all I know even be a browser add on that helps you do that.

This occurred to me too - what actually is this really accomplishing in the first place? I mean anyone who really wants to go to any effort to do so can easily enough avoid any monitoring they can do anyway.

I think this issue could be cleared up easily enough with some clarification from Stars here.

100% confirmed, guarateed that stars pays nobody to shill for them. it is actually a sore spot for them because of the nieve impressions that many have that they do exactly that.

i hereby refund your cred.

I agree that what matters most is whether Stars lied. The alleged lie that many posters here seem to be concerned about the most is in the following sentence:

Yes the wording is ambiguous and I can see why many people are having trouble understanding it. However, I wonder how anybody with half a brain can re-read the bolded part above and decide that "this feature" means "monitor players' internet browsing habits".

Assume for a moment that "this feature" does mean "monitor players' internet browsing habits". Then substitute "X" for the two equivalent terms. That would have Stars saying "Even though we don't do X, we decided to remove X from our software." That makes no sense. Why would Stars say such a thing? How could they remove X from their software if their software doesn't do X?

So, if this feature" doesn't mean "monitor players' internet browsing habits", what else could it mean. If you look through all the preceding text in the memo you find four phrases that describe things that could be regarded as features of the Stars code. I have highlighted them below:

All four of the bolded features specifically reference checking for SharkScope. Despite the repeated reference to this capability, some people choose to interpret "this feature" to refer only to "using built in Windows functions" and/or "A periodic query to Windows", which is not a feature but a method.

What makes the most sense, when you read the whole thing in context, is that "this feature" means "checking for SharkScope's IP". The fact that Stars could detect SharkScope's IP led people to believe erroneously that Stars was monitoring their internet browsing habits. Even though Stars wasn't monitoring people's browsing habits, Stars decided to get rid of a particular test that was leading some people to believe that they were monitoring those habits.

So, Stars did not lie about the removal of a feature. OP admits they are no longer testing for Sharkscope's IP address, and that is the feature they said they would remove. (So much for alleged lie #3)

Neither did they lie about the technique they were using to detect SharkScope's IP address. They specifically said The data returned by Netstat is a list of IP connections. It does not return a boolean result of a test for a particular IP address. (So much for alleged lie #1)

The 2nd lie alleged by OP is that Stars somehow concealed from us that they were also monitoring which processes we were running. I think that the stars website makes it quite clear that Stars may check what processes are running. The fact that they did not refer to this in their "apology" email is in no way a deliberate attempt to mislead. Their email addressed the specifc issue of SharkScope IP address detection, not the complete range of anti-cheating surveilance measures they are taking.

I would almost be tempted to ask a mod to change the thread title to "Lies, lies and more lies about PokerStars!", except I believe that OP was not deliberately trying to mislead, but was just gravely mistaken.

well... it was probably me calling you a shill and that's only because I'm a massive troll that likes to stir the pot

They said
and according to the OP they haven't, so if it's not a lie it's at least a gross misrepresentation of the truth...

just sayin'

Still no reaction from those liars ! :@
And soah... get a life with your 28k posts

I still don't get that logic. They haven't done it yet. But they never promised to do it immediately. You and other posters here are reading more into Stars' statement than is reasonable imo.

Hasn't it crossed anyone's mind that OP is just a bot-author, or similar scumbag with an agenda, who is creating controversy in order to pressurise sites like Stars into removing effective anti-bot measures?

Has anybody actually managed to replicate OP's findings?

What is the it that Stars promised to do but hasn't done? No such thng. They promised to remove the check to see if SharkScope's IP Address was being accessed. They did remove the check and OP admits it.

All the rest of this thread is just OP and others failing to comprehend a non-optimally-worded statement by Stars.

Despite his difficulties with reading comprehension, I think OP is bang-on wrt what the software is and isn't doing. His findings about the software are correct. His findings about Stars' alleged mendacity are all wrong.

Stars can suck my ****, this just goes to show they are just as bad as the rest of them. Its a blatant like whatever way you look at it. Lol @ the guys with Stars in their eyes'...if Stars started donating money to al'quaida these dudes would probably try and find a way of explaining it in a good light.

Hello All,

PokerStars has been open and up-front throughout recent discussions about SharkScope. We have consistently been honest and have shared a great of information on this issue. This post will continue that trend.

Indeed, the code used to determine if a TCP connection was present to the SharkScope.com IP by necessity retrieved the entire list of IP connections in an internal table, which we then iteratively checked for the SharkScope IP. Thus to receive a Yes/No answer we used a combination of Windows API and our own code to process the results. We never stated that the API we use will do it automatically as the OP incorrectly implied.

As previously stated, only if a prohibited connection was in the resulting table, then only the presence of the prohibited connection was reported back to the PokerStars server. If the result table contained no prohibited connections, all data was discarded. At no time was any IP connection data other than that regarding prohibited connections data sent back to the PokerStars server.

As we announced, PokerStars made software changes to stop checking whether players access SharkScope or other informational web sites. The suggestion that we have been anything less than truthful is false.

However SharkScope remains a prohibited service for use in conjunction with the PokerStars client, because it continues to sell access to players' private data without their consent and which was obtained by using our client software in violation of our Terms and Conditions. We will direct our future measures against SharkScope itself to make it more difficult for them to collect the data.

Further, PokerStars does and will continue to take steps to detect bots and other prohibited software, as clearly outlined in our EULA. These steps may include, but are not limited to, examination of software programs running concurrently with the PokerStars Software on the User's computer, and could in the future involve checking for IP connections to prohibited applications such as colluding bot servers or remote databases accessed by prohibited executable programs.

We realize that the above measures are not popular with some people, especially bot writers and bot users, but they will continue because PokerStars and our players share a common goal to enjoy online poker without bots and other unfair tools.

Best Regards,
PokerStars Game Security

michael,

i think the inference made here was not needed.

if you were a smart player (and i know you are a smart person, so i would guess you play smart too), then you would use SS in conjunction with stars.

your statement seems to lump most people using SS in a category of bot users or people with bad intentions. i would venture to guess that 99% of SS users do NOT fall in this category, and venture to guess that if you were a stars player you would have used SS before it became prohibited.

I don't think he meant SS users. More likely some of the posters in this thread.

then i stand corrected.

Pretty much what I thought was going on.
I still don't mind Stars taking steps to make sure games are played according to their rules.
I'd prefer more that they hadn't changed their minds about checking for sharkscope.
Now let's start hearing complaint threads from people getting chat banned for mentioning sharkscope in chat please.

thanks for the reply MichaelJ.

This I look forward to.

Exaclty, pretty much much what any logical person thought what was going on. I hope this thread now dies.

I sometimes use sharkscope to check out my friends or my own stats, but hardly ever anyone elses. I probably have stars open sometimes when I do this.

I could get banned for this?

Have you noticed guys in black suits and sunglasses randomly walking past your house lately?

May I ask what your policy on screen scrapes is? I would be fine with that too, but if it is something you do or might, without notice, do, then I'd like to know in advance, so that I don't for example, check email while playing.

I knew about Party Poker's screen scraping policy and I was just fine with it. I like as much transparency as possible.

No, you won't be banned. However if you disclose the information about other
players in PokerStars chat, your chat might be banned.

No, we don't.