Nambling Notes - Feb. 11, 2005

11 February 2005

Mobile Betting -- A new report from Juniper Research estimates that mobile gambling services will generate revenues of more than $19.3 billion--nearly one-third of all mobile entertainment revenues--by 2009. "Given the ubiquity of mobile handsets and the desire of many [gambling] providers to exploit this, then potentially the resulting sales could be substantially higher," the report states. "More than 90 percent of the population in the U.K. and U.S. have at some time played a lottery in its traditional paper form. Coupling this huge market with the immediacy and penetration of the mobile phone is a logical and lucrative proposition."

UK Lobbying Efforts -- An article in The Telegraph details a £120,000-a-year lobbying campaign by Ladbrokes. The piece includes documented evidence of lavish entertainment showered on dozens of MPs, peers, senior civil servants, ministers and key policy advisers. The systematic campaign was drawn up by LLM Communications and was designed to achieve two objectives: "to try and delay the Gambling Bill and to try and secure a fiscal regime for betting exchanges, which means that professional layers will pay the appropriate level of betting duty and the levy."

Security -- Speaking at the Secure London 2005 conference on Thursday, Detective Sergeant Steve Santorelli of the Metropolitan Police Computer Crime Unit said police are making headway in the battle against botnets. Botnets used to be the work of bored teenagers using networks of infected computers to gain points on online games such as Outwar, but criminal gangs are now using the networks to extort money from online companies. Police have been investigating a number of cases in which botnets are being used to take down gambling Web sites. Gangs launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks for half an hour and then send e-mails to the Web sites' administrators demanding large sums of money to prevent repeat attacks. Santorelli advised corporate users to review logs at regular intervals and have IDS systems in place to monitor traffic for unauthorized SMTP traffic--which may suggest a spammer's proxy within the network--and to look out for traffic on ports that should not be there.

New Model for Golden Palace -- Houston swimsuit model Shaune Bagwell--the ex-wife of the Astros' Jeff Bagwell--will be sporting the URL for online casino Golden Palace.com, which one the rights to do so by being the highest bidder on eBay. The company will pay Bagwell $15,099 for advertising space on her cleavage. "For 30 days, I will maximize the ad's visibility by wearing strapless dresses, low-cut tops and bikinis," Bagwell told the Houston Chronicle. "I plan on attending Rockets games, walking at Memorial Park and having lunches and dinners at high-profile eateries."