OK, imagine the tournament was deployed correctly and they didn't have to change your password. You eliminate the other guy, next guy eliminates you by blinding you out.

IS THE RESULT ANY DIFFERENT?

i don't think this is a situation for results oriented thinking.

of course the results are part of what has to be measured here.

This is the opposite of what everyone else has been arguing though. For some reason people actually seem shocked that there are employees at stars who even have the capability to do such a thing. I'm curious as to how those people think that stars could function if not a single person there has access to the type of power to do basically anything to a user's account.

Yeah, it's not like every employee definitely has this power. Even the one who did the raising on the account may have had to get a higher up to give him access first. If this tourney had 256 entrants, they may have to match up the 128 players manually which is a lot of work and it's likely you can't make a tourney with 64 tables and decide manually who plays who anyway. So just making it random would be unfair to the person who was going to get a bye thanks to these two sitting out. His bye goes elsewhere. Also not fair if you're matched up with a fish and get a high stakes HU SNG pro.

they wouldn't have known what their draw was going to be

At least, the shouldn't have, though either Stars or FT had a very predictable and very non-random way for doing the draw in these HU tourneys.

just addressing the password issue. an employee at stars has as much access to your account as a bank teller does to your bank account. both employees can override your password and make transactions thru your account. you just give them the benefit of the doubt not to do such a thing when you decide to do business with them. and i assume that stars' software is set up to track all these transactions as they occur just like the bank. so let's say a bank employee decides to steal 10k from your account and run off, you would get that money back coz the transactions are logged in an electronic journal somwhere and even if the dough isn't traceable the bank is responsible for their employees' actions and they will pay you back. same goes for stars, only difference is that your bank money is insurred by the government while your only insurance from stars is that they don't use your money for their day to day operations (which is better insurance than what other sites offer).

another example: where i work the network administrator can change your password on your company email as he wishes but can't view your current password. if he wanted to view the contents of your account he has to change your password. but whatever he does to email accounts is registered in a log (he can't delete or edit the log) and his superior can tell if he actually changed a password. most webmail systems work this way.

i don't agree that this situation can be compared to what happened at AP/UB simply because at the latter it was upper management and/or the third party auditor who abused the system's power. in this case it was a lower level employee who didn't know any better. and even if he had bad intentions, his actions are easily traceable.

If a bank employee wants to alter something in your account, they just do it in the backend. If you would compare this with a bank employee you should write it down as this:
A bank employee changes your PIN so he can do his thing, and then tells you you have a new PIN but have to choose a new one.
And that wouldnt strike you as 'odd'?

and you can't with an iom official?

Interesting...You tell me...

I don't know if josem will enter the thread, but he has been away and won't be back at work until Wednesday.

Hi,

As Mike Haven mentions above, I've been away over the last few days. If you ever have concerns about issues like this, you're almost always going to get a faster response by emailing support@pokerstars.com. There's a pretty awesome PokerStars Support team who are able to help twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

I can, however, confirm that adjusting player passwords is a restricted privilege, and that relatively few staff are able to do this. Not only is there no need for every staff member to have this ability, we think the current arrangements are more secure.

If you would like to discuss this further or have questions about this issue, please do email us. While we have a number of staff who read these forums and listen to player concerns, if you want a response on any issue, we would prefer for you to email us directly so that we can engage in a more meaningful direct discussion.

Sincerely,

Michael J
PokerStars Game Security Team

*shakes head*

If I'm being leveled... so what.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man

It's not an Indian shell game, it's an actual place, with actual people, that you can actually find on a map.

You are right.

Those are only cyber-people...

*rolleyes*

http://www.gov.im/gambling/benefits/aboutgcc.xml

As stated by posters above IOM is a real place, with actual regulations etc.




You assume too much.

/thread