R
rhombus
Legend
Silver Level
There was a thread posted here and on other forums, regarding free $25 for adding friends for a pokerstars promotion.
As it turned out it was a scam. After contacting Pokerstars support they gave the following advice, which can also be used whilst using other poker sites as well any any other financial activity i.e. banking.
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Thank you for your email.
Please be confirmed, that this link does not belong to PokerStars and we strongly suggest to avoid using any unreliable 3rd party promotion services.
Meantime after reviewing your Stars Account, thoroughly we can now confirm that there has not been any suspicious change of location and we have no reason to believe that your Stars Account may have been compromised.
Also we would like to make some suggestions to keep your Stars Account and online activities private and secure:
1. Never let the system remember any of your passwords. While systems provide this as a matter of convenience, this is the most common "hack".
2. Password-protect your Windows system so that when it goes to sleep, you have to enter a password to get back in.
3. Always choose a strong password. Never use a word that can be found in a dictionary, and never, ever use kids names, birthdays, friends names, or a password related to the site.
4. Never, ever share your Stars Account password with anyone. You would not let someone else access your online banking account, so why let someone else access your Stars Account?
5. Do not use the same password in any two locations. We understand it makes it easy to have the same password everywhere but it also makes it easy for the hackers.
6. Change your passwords very often. Three months is too long to keep the same password on a financial account. When changing passwords, never re-use an older password, nor any variant of it.
7. If someone chats to you online claiming to be your close buddy who wants a loan...call and ask first.
8. Never log into Windows to play poker as "Administrator" or equivalent. Use a restricted user account to ensure key loggers or Trojans have a much more difficult time gaining access. Use XP Professional as in XP Home Edition all accounts are set up as Administrator.
9. Windows Firewall will not protect you sufficiently, as it only blocks attacks from the outside from getting in. Use (exactly) one of the following: Norton, McAfee, ZoneAlarm, Kaspersky. Additionally, use at least two good spyware scanners.
10. Virus/Trojan/Spyware Scanners only detect things they know about. It is still possible to catch a customized piece of spyware or a key logger that has never been reported to the scanner authors. Thus, exercise good judgement when deciding what to download.
11. Here is the hard one: do not play from anybody else's computer. Consider this: You go to all the trouble to protect your computer and Stars Account with the steps we have outlined above. Now you sit down at somebody else's laptop and type in your user ID and password.
I trust that this has been helpful to you, but please feel free to contact us again anytime if we can help you further.
Regards,
Andrej
Stars Security
As it turned out it was a scam. After contacting Pokerstars support they gave the following advice, which can also be used whilst using other poker sites as well any any other financial activity i.e. banking.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your email.
Please be confirmed, that this link does not belong to PokerStars and we strongly suggest to avoid using any unreliable 3rd party promotion services.
Meantime after reviewing your Stars Account, thoroughly we can now confirm that there has not been any suspicious change of location and we have no reason to believe that your Stars Account may have been compromised.
Also we would like to make some suggestions to keep your Stars Account and online activities private and secure:
1. Never let the system remember any of your passwords. While systems provide this as a matter of convenience, this is the most common "hack".
2. Password-protect your Windows system so that when it goes to sleep, you have to enter a password to get back in.
3. Always choose a strong password. Never use a word that can be found in a dictionary, and never, ever use kids names, birthdays, friends names, or a password related to the site.
4. Never, ever share your Stars Account password with anyone. You would not let someone else access your online banking account, so why let someone else access your Stars Account?
5. Do not use the same password in any two locations. We understand it makes it easy to have the same password everywhere but it also makes it easy for the hackers.
6. Change your passwords very often. Three months is too long to keep the same password on a financial account. When changing passwords, never re-use an older password, nor any variant of it.
7. If someone chats to you online claiming to be your close buddy who wants a loan...call and ask first.
8. Never log into Windows to play poker as "Administrator" or equivalent. Use a restricted user account to ensure key loggers or Trojans have a much more difficult time gaining access. Use XP Professional as in XP Home Edition all accounts are set up as Administrator.
9. Windows Firewall will not protect you sufficiently, as it only blocks attacks from the outside from getting in. Use (exactly) one of the following: Norton, McAfee, ZoneAlarm, Kaspersky. Additionally, use at least two good spyware scanners.
10. Virus/Trojan/Spyware Scanners only detect things they know about. It is still possible to catch a customized piece of spyware or a key logger that has never been reported to the scanner authors. Thus, exercise good judgement when deciding what to download.
11. Here is the hard one: do not play from anybody else's computer. Consider this: You go to all the trouble to protect your computer and Stars Account with the steps we have outlined above. Now you sit down at somebody else's laptop and type in your user ID and password.
I trust that this has been helpful to you, but please feel free to contact us again anytime if we can help you further.
Regards,
Andrej
Stars Security
