I've been traveling around the globe for years, mostly funding trips by working and partially playing poker. It has been 2 years now since the last hand, but as travels get longer people ask more questions. I always try to avoid the subject poker. However a friend of mine works in IT and keeps asking me personal questions. What site I play on, what my biggest downswing was etc. He even tried to befriend me on my YouTube channel so he can read my comments on poker videos etc. What can a skilled IT worker possibly know about my poker life? He's digging for private info. If you have a friend that works at pokerstars, can they simply look up a name and check the account history? I seriously wonder why he is asking me all these questions
If you didn't mention poker to your co-worker and your usernames don't have any public links to your name, then he should not have any way to find any info out about you. Data is pretty secure, even on shady small sites, they don't just publish personal data (there's no upside for them either).
I'd suggest just not mentioning poker to people you don't want to know about your personal hobby or profession, and avoid using usernames that are the same as usernames you'd use for non poker, no name identifiers either.
Avoid clicking any links from him on the machine you use for playing. Very easy to set you up with a rootkit and abuse your habits. If you travel, then you change IP a lot and services you use on regular basis have you tagged as someone who is not IP consistent. Then this combined with malware and it's much easier for cybercriminals to steal your ID and defraud your money by skrill/PS. Even play vs you while watching your desktop, right. Anyone who is techsavvy could do that quite easily. If he is 'evil' enough he might be going for your personal info to set up some kind of a social engineering scam. Pretty sure that if he knew enough details he could just call PS support line and reclaim your account on his behalf. etc etc. Be very cautious.
And how could I find out about the rootkit? A while ago he tried to befriend me on my YouTube channel which I found freaky. I never responded but yesterday I noticed he is in my list of followers, and he doesn't even like me. When he requested that, I changed the google+ settings so that he could not see what videos I am watching and what my comments are. I told the guys that I don't like to talk about poker/money but last week he asked where I played and what my biggest swings were. I don't know if I'm being paranoid or he's fishing. Every time he asks me something personal he avoids eye contact with me and giggles at the others as if he knows something. I'm on many forums, talking about relationships/finance/politics/poker. I wonder if he could somehow track down my screennames
Resp in email.
I don't know how easy it is to retrieve someone's hotmail password these days, but if he managed to do that he could read my communication with pokerstars and get to my SN. Does Hotmail have protection when someone with a different IP logs in with your password? I guess not
Gmail keeps logs of it and sometimes declines login attempts. Hotmail should too.
For you, since you travelled a lot, I wouldn't rely on such stuff. Should be able to check manually thourgh the list of logins if you had any intruders.
I think you might be a little paranoid here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you told him at some point that you play online poker. He's probably digging for info or has matched up a username you use in poker to one you use else ware.
Can you let us know how he got your youtube username? Did you tell it to him or link him to a video or profile involving you?
A while ago YouTube matched up with Google+. There was a lot of criticism regarding privacy and even today you find many videos about the topic. I immediately changed my privacy settings and username so that nobody could read comments about private topics on my profile page. Now 2 years later it turns out that if you go to Gmail and from there Google+, you can search for your friends names in the search box and find anyone who has an account (YouTube). I asked my cousin yesterday and he immediately found my "anonymous nickname". Google+ does not protect it. I've known the friend group since college and I was playing at least 6 hours a day, so they know. Then after graduation I left so it makes sense that they are fishing for my income after all these years. Most of it is from working though. I never mentioned numbers to anyone and I've never grinded a good sample higher than the 30s, but in many South East Asian countries that is sufficiënt to get by and I have done it for a while. Not anymore, but I think about it
As of August 2015 google+ is no longer required to use the full functions of youtube. Just decouple it.
Hi.