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'French Spider Man' Scales the Sydney Harbour Bridge. |
Spiderman -- Allain Robert, the 41-year-old daredevil more popularly known as the French Spiderman, today made the Sydney Harbour Bridge his latest mission accomplished by climbing it without a rope or harness. That's big news in itself, but in the I-gaming circles, the real story is that he was shirtless and dawning the GoldenPalace.com on his chest and back. Traffic was halted on the bridge as drivers stopped to gaze at the spectacle of a man limbering 134 meters above sea level. He walked back and forth along the top of the bridge as helicopters buzzed over his head. Australian authorities are concerned at how such a breach of security could occur while the country is hosting the Rugby World Cup. Golden Palace, an online casino operator has become famous for sponsoring such stunts. Its URL began showing up on TV tattooed to the backs of professional boxers. The past year has been marked by several streakers crashing marquee sporting events dawning GP body ads.
DDoS Protection -- Network Security company DeepNines Technologies has announced its newest security system in the wake of crime wave that involved perpetrators launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on several I-gaming sites and then blackmailing them for large sums of money. DeepNines says that its Sleuth9 Security System, which runs on the Sun platform, evaluates traffic at the packet level and can detect and prevent attacks from breaching a network by forming a defense against DoS, DDoS, Trojan horses, worms, and viruses. Sleuth9 can be deployed at the perimeter of a network and in front of other likely targets such as web servers, mail servers, and application servers.
Law Suit -- AT&T is seeking a permanent injunction against eBay and its PayPal unit from using what it claims is AT&T patented technology on secure online payments. AT&T is also suing for the profits and revenues gained from the use of the technology. AT&T claims eBay and PayPal have violated its patent that covers transactions by intermediary processing of secure payments by communications systems like the Internet.
e-Fraud Bust -- Operation Cyber Sweep-- a nationwide crackdown on Internet fraud in the United States coordinated by the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Trade Commission, postal inspectors, customs officials, and even state authorities and foreign governments in Ghana, Nigeria and Lithuania--has already arrested over 125 people in the largest Internet fraud sting ever. Since the beginning of the investigations on Oct. 1, 2003, officials have discovered over 125,000 victims who have lost an estimated $100 million due to identity theft, online solicitation of private credit card and banking details, fake e-mails, the sale of counterfeit goods and more.
Ultimate Bingo -- T & G2, the company that owns gaming group Zingo Sales, is compiling a widespread distribution and marketing program with several businesses in Europe and is establishing a German subsidiary that will handle all of its business there. Zingo Sales will distribute the Ultimate Bingo games in Europe across the Internet, bars, restaurants, and electronic devices.
Mobile Debts -- A research study in New South Wales that was conducted by two senior academics from the University of Newcastle and the NSW Financial Counsellors' Association (FCAN) shows that the 18 to 24 year-olds have a higher rate of mobile phone-related debt than any other age group. Mobile phone debt is the primary debt for 84 percent of the 2,378 NSW clients in financial difficulty that were surveyed for the study in 2002. Fourteen percent listed gambling as the most frequent cause of financial crisis.
Player Tracking -- Stating that it has lost faith in tagging systems that use cookies and Internet protocol, William Hill has contracted e-CRM agency RedEye to explore different ways of tracking consumers. RedEye claims that IP-based server logs can raise visitor numbers by up to 660 per cent over a 28-day period and believes that cookies can lead to a 128 per cent over-statement of visitors numbers. William Hill is currently using RedEye's platform to identify the log-in details of customers and their activities at www.williamhill.co.uk.