Casinos Identify Computers To Prevent Fraud

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Online casinos offer bonuses and other benefits to new players for signing up with them. Some of the welcome bonuses do not require players to make any deposit and are given upfront as playing credits. Another benefit that does not require any deposit from the player is the free spin welcome bonus. In addition there are usually match bonuses offered that run into several hundred dollars or even thousands of dollars. Online casinos that offer tournaments often enter new players into freeroll tournaments. Therefore online casinos have a lot of money riding on these bonuses. The casinos do not mind spending the money provided it is honestly used, which means that each player should avail of these benefits only once.

However these benefits are not always honestly used. There are some online players who try to register again and again with the same online casino under different names. This results in financial losses to the casino. In order to prevent this from happening online casinos have developed mechanisms to identify the computer through which a player registers with them. They then offer the one time new player benefits only once to each computer. This condition is incorporated in the terms and conditions, which the players are supposed to read before registering. Therefore players are warned that by allowing other persons to register from their computer they too will become a party to the fraud.

The download version of the software contains programs that locate the unique information of each computer and transmit it to the server of the online casino. This information includes the computer's IP address, MAC address of the network card, the serial number and version of the CPU, the hard drive serial and other information that identify individual machines as being unique. When a new player registers this information from his computer is matched with the information stored in the online casino's server. If it matches with the information stored then the attempt to register is cancelled and the player is pulled up for fraud. Though this method is not foolproof it works to a large extent and helps reduce fraud and bonus abuse.

Players who want to circumvent this check can use different machines on different networks or even stand alone different computers. For example a player can use a home computer, an office computer, a laptop and a friend's computer to successfully open four different accounts. However, online casinos have evolved other methods to prevent this. The methods include identity checks through addresses, social security numbers and bank accounts.

Players should read through the privacy policy of the online casino in order to learn what information the casino will collect and how it will use the information. Since the privacy policy of each operator is different the player should read the policy for each casino he intends to play at.

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