I like my privacy and I am tired of having my info being shared by Google and friends. I'd like to use a VPN to make sure it doesn't happen so easily anymore (and also using alternative services).

I play on many networks so I'd like to know if anyone else is running a VPN and if the sites are ok with it. I'm sure it raises some flags but has any network out there been closing accounts for VPN usage only?

thanks

Hi stake monster , I noticed you said privacy with google etc , have u seen my logs with dns issues and google pages on 888 non-download software? I have been a player for the past 4 years , the computer I have wont let me download the actual 888 poker software "says file is from an untrusted location" anyway , I know u play many diff networks me too , I have trouble with browser redirects and hacks like on google pages etc .My dns servers are under virgin media ,they say my ip address is blacklisted but is fine ,I disagree, I think having a vpn would help my issues too but I think the sites don't like players using the vpns because of terms of service .esp in usa..im sure someone else can confirm facts here .touchy area I feel and support don't go into much detail on ip addressing or helping someone with network troubles.

Stake Monster,

Since you presumably have a chunk of money at risk, the safest option would be to contact the sites concerned and get clear advice from them.

Yea I emailed Stars and their reply didn't make me feel that safe. It basically says "there's no reason for VPN usage to break the TOS but if we see you're playing from banned countries it is against the TOS and we'll close your account." So if I do use a VPN I will need to make sure the US and other banned countries aren't being relayed through. Or alternatively just have a computer for poker playing and another for everything else.

No.

They are saying that you can use a VPN - but you can't use it while you are in one of the restricted/prohibited jurisdictions.

The restricted/prohibited jurisdictions are USA, France, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Denmark and Belgium (and their respective territories*) - see Section 5.11 here: http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/tos/

There's no such thing as an IP address having a "country" - only third-party databases which are used to provide a best estimate on where that IP address is likely to be.

The thing that matters with PokerStars is where you actually are physically located. Thus, it is possible in some circumstances for PokerStars to believe you are in a prohibited region, when you are actually not... and if that's the case, they'll just ask for some confirmation that that's the case.


There may be some variance with certain territories, so double-check if you're in one

Ok Lets get some facts straighten out here , Josem is correct, However the USA based cusomers" pokerplayers " are not in any circumstance allowed to play on stars or fulltilt period ,that's why a lot of the players have moved to residential areas like mexico or places that border on the edge of the usa.

Using a VPN is allowed on pokerstars at their discretion and is solely done by emailing them and asking them to do this ,this means that they can still see your external ip address when u authenticate the log in procedure ,I have an rsa token so im not sure how that works differently to the normal log in, but take it from me if you set your proxy to countries that are not filtered through the usa states or any other place in the usa then youll be fine. BUt you have to filter the proxy vpn connection.

Ive lived in England and primarily played on stars up till I got banned for 6 months in june ,now whilst im trying to sort these issues out ,My ip address has become blacklisted this means im on sorbs/casa for sending/receiving spam through a mail client or mail server of which I don't have ,only mail accounts I ever use is through yahoo or Hotmail/outlook etc. However my SMTP is not configured properly which means that my ip is somewhat shot to pieces ,Ive turned off port 25 for mailclient stuff now .

Anyway what Im saying is in general is that there are sites out there that will hide your ip or mask them from the network /internet however this is by far means very very difficult and I know because Ive used them before ,ive even used TOr onion browsers and stuff to circumvent connection ip ,again this stuff doesn't actually work in the way you want it to, at the end of the day pokerstars when you connect up to their servers ,they can see your "external ip physical address" ,this goes with anything that you connect up to .Your IP address in my opinion is better server going through a proxy tunnel on encrypted layers of support on an ssd drive based machine.

Josem will correct me and say that this is all in terms of combatting security and fraud etc ,however I don't know the full extent of why they would need your ip address in the first place let alone what they would personally do with it,I mean some poker companys wont mention any names but they sent everyones ip address to a spam company.

Anyway ,don't listen to people out there that say you can hide your ip address because its not possible to do so, and anyone in particular for example AEP who was by and large extorting money to put players on some kind of special network is clearly lying through their back teeth.

best of luck stakemonster

josem when you said about other countries ,most vpns or proxys use a lot of different countries or locations to reroute your ip address,These can be done so that they dynamically change every 15 minutes or every hour and hour .

You would need to get stakemonster a special VPN provider or PROXY host provider to connect up to the sites and make sure your system is thouroughly clean .

I say all of this but im still on a residentialled ip address by virgin media on an ip blacklist running spam through all my mail accounts supposedly..still I have all of the above to look forward to when my pokerstars ban ends in November .

Every computer you communicate with over the internet needs to know your IP address because that's how the internet works.

It's a little like the postal mail system - if you want someone to send you a letter, they need to know your postal address. You can then use a mail forwarding service, but the principle is the same. If you want to receive information from the PokerStars computers (eg, what your hole cards are) then the PokerStars computer needs to send that information to you, and that is done using IP addresses.

There's a reasonable explanation of this stuff in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ip_address

Josem ,you are correct any site which you connect up to gives away your physical ip address correct?

So point in question is this :

Each site has its own privacy policy installed that filtrates cookie files/advertising content ,however these files are relayed through temp internet files when youre connected to a particular site.

So for example If I go to pokerstars browser or use the pokerstars client software ,can you please explain what marketing or external sites we as players are connecting our ip address upto please?

from what I see in the privacy report alone for twoplustww.coms webdomain is a lot of advertising stuff and other sites in particular "zedo.com"

I want to establish what these other sites have to hold our ip address for,is it really marketing and advertising ? or are we configured to accept all of these sites into our domain that have absolutely nothing to do with pokerstars or twoplustwo whatsoever...and

In my opinion when I am connected to a site ,I am seeing a lot of temp files being sent and received by the poker servers that im connected to ,Now the information in light of being sent and received comes in the form of data packets ,how do we know how to trust all of the "data packets" coming from the poker servers if they hold advertising and marketing .?

Where is the actual physical real time data that says what my cards are and where that data is and is coming through which port .? lets get real here because for all I know the same data that is supposedly coming from the poker sites could in fact well be coming from marketing and advertising companys. correct??

And if that's not too technical for you to resolve josem sir then here is another problem.:

In the terms of service agreed by rational services ,they legally state that all advertising content and marketing content must be run through the download of the browser .This includes sites /domains for security/affiliate site domains/3rd party networks etc the list goes on but you see my point.

In terms of security as a player all I would like to know is how the card delivery system works ,and on what ports and how its delivered to our computers, I don't want to be bombarded with 300,000 Temp internet files that contain adverts or marketing stuff from the sites ,I simply want the card data .Or is it technically too difficult?

kaaron_888_76,

PokerStars doesn't have any external advertising on the website.

If you are interested in monitoring the internet activity on your computer, try running the program 'netstat' which comes with Windows.

I believe Josem I know how to work netstat tuvm.

Listen ,Ive just looked at the website content for pokerstars.com

now if you go to under tools/safety/privacy policy under pokerstars site
you will see there is the following ad website called http:fls doubleclick.net

please explain what the doubleclick.net piece of cookie file does ?

I work all a number of avenues in networking to help fix issues and solve problems Josem but Im failing to understand why so much content is routed through a lot of poker sites and not just pokerstars, have a look at 888 pokers privacy policy and tell me what you find.

sincere regards ;

Kaaron,

Plain English information on cookies used by PokerStars.COM website are available here:

http://www.pokerstars.com/cookies/

We are skating territory tha 2+2 would prefer isn't discussed on their site. Keep the conversation away from ways to get around IP blocks or playing from forbidden countries and we are fine, otherwise I'll nuke the thread.

Thanks,
Kerowo

Dear Kerowo sir, And Josem

I am not trying to deflate the thread by talking about ip circumvention here let me state this for the record as I do play a lot of poker online,or at least I did for a number of 5 years or so.

What I was trying to establish is the cookie file content being delivered by the sites that contain 3rd party network information which in turn is sending advertising and marketing content through its web browser or in pokerstars case most possibly the updater program which comes through port 80 http unsecured.

I do believe pokerstars holds the most recognisable and thorough secure site in terms of its security and log ins, However I want to make the point clear that I am not looking to find ways around ip address hiding as basically I don't think there is any alternate method that can be used in the first place ,ie when ip makes connection to a particular server it is going to get recognised its as simple as that.

If you log in to pokerstars website and play on the site your external ip address is still released along with the vpn address ip which again is also noticed .YOu can not physically hide your ip address at all.

Josem, do you think it make sense that users should have the privacy to use a VPN on Pokerstars?

not really. TOR, VPN and socks proxies all keep keep your IP private from the computers with which youre communicating. If you want to stick with the postal analogy, think of it like mail forwarding.

People connect to PokerStars using all sorts of different methods, for all sorts of different reasons. I don't think it is a significant problem.

A reasonable analogy can be to using Skype or other instant messaging tools - they could be used to collude, but the harm caused by trying to ban all instant messaging tools is greater than the benefit gained by doing so.
Yes, really. Using VPN, TOR and other proxy systems simply provide a different public-facing IP address, just like my mail forwarding analogy.

Clearly, for any two computers to communicate with each other on the internet, they need to be able to route the data to each other, and this inherently requires IP addresses when using IP protocols.

The other poster was just proving that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". They hear the phrase "IP addresses" and think there's some sinister meaning to IP addresses, despite them being fundamental and crucial to the operation of the internet and all communication that takes place on the internet.

Cookies are used by web browsers and web sites. That's what cookies are. They're used by the PokerStars website as described in really simple and accessible English in the link provided above.

The PokerStars software client doesn't use cookies, because the PokerStars software client is not a web browser.

No Josem but the privacy policy when I last looked at it yesterday contains an advertising site called "doubleclick.net"

This is not what Info I thought I was going to be downloading from the pokerstars.com website, I just want to download a safe and secure program without all the advertising and 3rd party content stuff.

I also found out yesterday that you can actually hide your ip address from clear view of any site structure but im not going into detail about it right this moment .That's for me to know im afraid as I would be causing an argument with some people on here and I would rather just stay on the level .

The privacy policy for the website as I said can be looked at under tools"top right hand corner of webpage" safety/webpage privacy policy. This holds all the information about any particular site and what it contains there.

ps I watched a very nice programme last night on the secret underworld of the "hackers" at large and cyber -security and what I watched was totally amazing , the powers that be invented code to shut down the actual nuclear reactors in Iran. spooky stuff I know but if they can do all this by inserting special code who knows what can be done just by using a computer technology this day . Really amazing to watch and learn from in my opinion.

...and this is explained in the link that I provided earlier: http://www.pokerstars.com/cookies/

No, the "hackers" didn't "invent code to shut down the actual nuclear reactors in Iran".

a) The malware interfered with uranium enrichment facilities. They aren't "nuclear reactors" in the normal sense of the word.

b) The software didn't shut down the facilities. That was a fundamental point of the malware.

The only relationship between US Government malware and this conversation about IP address and web browser cookies is that on both issues, you are taking little snippets of knowledge, fundamentally misunderstanding the issues, and spewing up incorrect claims.

On all of these issues you would benefit from a simple read of some basic overviews of the issues - Wikipedia would be a reasonable place to start.

stuxnet was the malware that decimated all those systems.

Anyway Josem I wont argue with you ,you work for pokerstars and I work for myself ,I doubt you have even seen malware or viruses or botnets at all on your companys systems or any other viral infection because the secret to your company is that all of the pokerstars site is branded by a fraud and security team that deal with the very prevention of all this kind of stuff.

So when you have so much prevention security on your site to prevent being doss attacked or malware infected it,why insult my over my knowledge when clearly you already know that you purchase brand agencys to help combat the above problematic issues..

What you fail to realise is that I have studied botnets/malware/spyware and every other piece of bad software and I know when im being port scanned and targeted .Do I have firewalls and and security sure yes I do ,but what I don't have is the MASSIVE response teams the high overlay of security or brand protection resources that your company has suffice to say I think when coming in as a player I am put at a massive disadvantage wouldnt you say so?

In other words your online security is safer than mine, pokerstars wins I lose simple as that.

Even card data is made up of code ,however you fail to misunderstand what IM driving at here. It would be nice if the sites actually came clean about their business model in its entirety.

If your concern is that a poker site is using an ad agency to serve you adds in addition to the rest of the poker stuff I think you are being overly paranoid. Regardless, this thread has enough name calling in it.