Keep Yourself Informed

The internet fraudsters and spammers are making their way into the online poker industry, so it is very important for us to keep ourselves informed on the safety of our poker room and blacklisted sites, or sites that have been suspected of fraudulent activity.

The problem now is that these people have taken the initiative to contact even professional online poker players via e-mail, etc. In the case of Zupp Jepsen, he was prompted by someone claiming to be from a television show that has featured several of the industry's pros. Therefore, this probably did not seem like an entirely unreasonable request. So how do we protect ourselves from these people? Luckily for Zepsen, he knew enough to steer clear of the prompts to download a "pdf" file that turned out to be a .exe file, or a trojan, that would have allowed this swindler access to his online poker room password, and therefore his money!!

This could happen to anyone. The best advice that I can give at this point is to ignore any solicitation for poker outside of the site itself and its management teams. Keep yourself updated with eCOGRA and Ethoca, and various other organizations dedicated to the safety of internet poker.

Secondly, make sure that your anti-virus programs are updated and running at all times. The problem with this being that many online poker sites, especially those with non-downloadable flash games, require that players disable their firewalls. The best defense against this is to get yourself a mac computer. Or if you are using a PC, use Linux. Most viruses and trojans are built for Windows as this is what the majority of computer users have. Even though most online poker rooms do not support Macs or Linux, you can always download a windows emulator.

Finally, check in with the latest online poker news sites, such as pokerintensity.com to read up on the latest fraud attempts in order to recognize when someone may be trying to swindle you!