here is the email
Thank you for your Email. PokerStars has been listening to recent
player feedback regarding SharkScope.
We want to limit the amount of information that third party results
websites can publish because of our strong commitment to upholding the
integrity of our games. We oppose websites publishing player
profitability data by default for two key reasons:
Firstly, many of our players simply don't want their ROI information to
be publicly available. They have a right to privacy of this information.
Secondly, it gives an unfair advantage to those players who are able to
obtain ROI data about players who have not consented for their
information to be shown.
We have been working with various sites that currently display player
profitability data and the vast majority of those sites have agreed to
modify the default settings for the display of player data. Sites who
are working with us have agreed that profitability data will only be
available on players who have themselves specifically opted in, thus
giving their consent for their profitability data to be displayed on
that service. The default setting will be that tournament cashes only
will be displayed.
The sites who intend to comply with our data policy also agree to allow
players to opt out totally from their service, so that zero information
will be displayed about them.
Among the sites that have agreed to comply and that will remain
permitted are:
http://www.bluffmagazine.com/thepokerdb/
http://www.officialpokerrankings.com
http://arcatum.net/startracker
http://www.playerpeek.com/
http://www.pokerprolabs.com
Note that these sites might not necessarily be able to show all the
information they currently display, once opt-in is fully functional.
SharkScope has refused to remove player profitability and ROI data by
default and therefore their service now falls into the category of
prohibited for use in conjunction with the PokerStars Client.
SharkScope will remain a prohibited service, for the reasons listed
above. We ask that players do not use it at all in conjunction with
PokerStars - the website, the HUD, or any other future tools that they
might develop.
You may still check your own stats provided the PokerStars client is not
running.
PokerStars will focus its enforcement efforts predominantly on limiting
the effectiveness of SharkScope and other dataminers by preventing their
ability to extract the data from the PokerStars client without either
the permission of PokerStars, or the players concerned.
We will not be closing accounts of players found to be using SharkScope.
Instead, we will be working hard to ensure that the data gathered by
SharkScope is incomplete and unreliable. We will, however, be warning
players who "shout out" statistics in chat, under our "abuse of other
players" chat rules. To report such instances, please call a Chat
Moderator using the tools built into the PokerStars client.
We believe that this policy will deliver on our commitment to listening
to players who have overwhelmingly asked us to prevent SharkScope from
publishing their private information, while not being heavy handed
against the many players who aren't aware of the rules against
SharkScope, or who are concerned about their browsing privacy.
As always, we welcome feedback on this policy, so please email us
anytime at
support@pokerstars.com. We will work hard to deliver the best
possible
poker games, with the highest standards of integrity now and
into the future.
Regards,
Howard
PokerStars Support Team
