Fighting Spam One Casino at a Time

Fight Casino Spam (FCS), a movement started to fight the spread of gambling-related spam mail, launched its Web site on Oct. 20 and began collecting and cataloguing gambling-related reports from spam victims. The goal of the new site is to provide an updated list of the good and bad Web sites--a sort of "who's who" of spamming.

"I'm pretty much planning to make it a name and shame campaign." - Edward Yu Fight Casino Spam

The brainchild of Internet marketing specialist Edward Yu, it is a simple site that explains the movement and supplies an e-mail address to which spam victims should send reports

As founder of Lady Luck Media, a Web site design and marketing company for the online casino industry, Yu is all too familiar with the menace that is spam. He said he is leading this fight because, through online forums, he has found that people don't want to receive gambling-related spam, or any spam for that matter.

"I'm starting with gambling because I have knowledge and business contacts in this industry to be able to put together an initiative to fight this," Yu explained

FCS compiles and databases the information and reports to casinos the number of spam reports they're getting. They have a blacklist of e-mail addresses where spam originates and a white list of people who do not want to receive spam mail of any sort, which is offered to the casinos.

"Once we have a good census of reports," Yu explained, "we'll be able to present a lot of data live on the site. So there will be charts, top lists of the worst offenders, top lists of the best casinos who deal with these reports and eliminate the spam. And then there will also be lists of those who don't really care and just let it go on. I'm pretty much planning to make it a name and shame campaign."

Running this type of service makes Yu privy to a lot of personal information, but he insists that he is not doing this to build his own mailing list. It is simply a public service to gambling consumers and operators.

"The only personal data I'm going to have is people's e-mail addresses," Yu said. "I'm not going to have their names. I'm not going to have any land addresses or phone numbers. Preferably, I wouldn't want to make this an anonymous service because that means I won't be able to build up a list of people who don't want to receive spam mail."

Yu hopes to make casino spam reporting a regular practice in the industry.

"My ultimate goal is to make this some sort of standard, basically, that all online casinos, online poker rooms, online bingo, can all sort of abide by and have a seal that says, 'We don't spam,' according to this third-party company," Yu said.

Only a small amount of data has been collected so far, but Yu said he is getting the word out through online forums and by talking to online casino owners.