The joys of modern communication (Spammers)
Every few days I am reminded why data privacy laws are important, by the kind people of many semi-legitimate online casino providers. I get a fun little text from a new one at least once a week offering me some sort of bonus, despite the fact that I've never registered for an online gambling website...
I love the creativity in this one, I don't know if their SMS provider blocks the word Spins to avoid this sort of spam, but my mobile provider has never blocked a message for containing the word spins.
I wonder how many Spin Doctors they have to employ to make their website seem good 🤔. Or is that what they call the people who make the slots software?
I love their persistence, especially considering that this is the first time this specific brand messaged me (it's always a new brand every time).
Am I doomed to receive these messages forever? Is that what this promo code means? Are they taunting me?
You might wonder why I called them semi-legitimate. Well, I'm guessing they got my data from a data breach, although this could just as easily be from a guess of my number. But I haven't received these messages before in this volume. I'm almost certain I know which breach it's because of too, but hey ho, what can I do about it?
As well as this, they're all regulated in the wonderful land of Curacao which has quite the reputation for being way to lax on gambling operators, to the point of not being accepted as a valid licence for a gambling website to operate in many countries, which include the following:
- The United Kingdom
- The USA
- Germany
- The Netherlands
- France
- Belize
- Curaçao
That's brilliant isn't it, the licence is so relaxed, that the country itself does not accept it. I live in the United Kingdom, and so offering these products to me is illegal as far as I can tell based on the licences specified in the footer of this site (and others).
This website, and all of the ones that I have checked, if you look at their licence, it's always from Curacao. I thought maybe this one would be different as it listed a Cyprus address, but if you look up that name it turns out they do have a Curacao Licence. Also, I noticed a few of the older texts (not shown above) also come from the same WinBet group, not that I suppose I should be surprised.
But what if they don't actually accept UK players?
I'm pretty sure they must otherwise they wouldn't be shelling out money to text me, but just to be sure I opened the registration form...
... and surprise, it accepts UK phone numbers and doesn't block my UK IP, so I have a feeling they'd be very happy to have me as a customer. Also the fact that they support the local currency (GBP £) makes it even more obvious.
But what can I do?
Well I did the typical thing for the longest time, which is to report the spam messages to my mobile provider by forwarding them with the sender's name to 7726. But that really doesn't do anything for me to stop these future ones as they just keep coming with new names as you saw above.
I finally stumbled upon the page I was looking for (I think) today by accident while researching the company. I think it's the tell us something in confidence page, because as far as I can tell it's unlicensed here and they're soliciting me. I've put in a request with my contact details so hopefully they'll do something about it but I don't know if there is much. Just hoping they'll take it more seriously than my network and the ICO as a gambling regulations breach as that seems like something more strictly regulated.
I of course also tried contacting them to ask them to remove my number, but they told me I'd need to log in to my (non-existent) account to unsubscribe from the messages or provide my account email (again that doesn't exist) so I guess that was a silly idea. Worth a try I suppose. I did try once more and they simply closed the chat on me when I stated my request. Very efficient!
It's interesting that some gambling websites still rate it highly, but I imagine they're getting a handsome payout for every person they entice so they're biased towards the casino anyway. I also noticed that the time on that article stays at 24 seconds ago no matter when you visit the page which is an interesting trick. It actually makes it feel less legitimate to me as I doubt my search engine could index it in that time and serve it to me unless it was a very lucky coincidence.
May your next support agent not just close the chat on you when you ask for help.
Edit 16th March 2024
I got an absolutely cracking text today which trumps all the previous ones:
My non-existent account is gleaming with a (this exclusive) bonus! Can you believe it? I never thought I'd be that lucky. If they keep being this creative maybe I don't mind it - although it seems they may be getting more frequent with the fact that I got one yesterday too.