Online gambling sites are a popular target for phishing attacks, where fake emails, purporting to be from a casino, are used to attempt to get a users details. Phishing attacks were once something reserved for online banking, but now emails linking to fake login pages for casinos are quite common place.
Another tactic that online casinos are facing is software agents, known as bots, which are used to play automatically. These bots are often able to beat the majority of human players, making lots of money for the dishonest bot users.
To combat these bots, and to help protect players from account phishing, Roman Yampolskiy of the University of Buffalo in New York, working with his colleage Venu Govindaraju, has written some software that monitors how you play. The software catalogues everything from how much a player bets, to how they play – how often they increase bets, or fold a bet. This information is aggregated to create a persons 'gambling DNA' – large changes in playing style will be flagged as suspicious behaviour.
Yampolskiy says that after watching an hour of play, the software can authenticate players with an accuracy of around 80 percent. The accuracy gets better the longer someone plays.
Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group in Edmonto commented that while the software may work for casual players, it would be unlikely to work with professional players, or even strong hobbyists, as stronger players usually try not to have a predictable play style.
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