This is not new: who says "account online poker" also says "attention to piracy"! Daniel Negreanu learned at his expense this week, even though he has been victim of hacking his PokerStars account. Negreanu was not using the safety PokerStars RSA key and, as is the case for most acts of hacking, the pirate was able to connect to the account for Negreanu in hacking first his email account. PokerCollectif so reminds you to maximally secure your poker accounts and your email addresses to avoid finding yourself in the same situation. For the curious, here are the details of the hacking of Daniel Negreanu, such that diffuse on his blog:
"I flew from Melbourne on 31 January and when I arrived, something crazy happened. I tried to login to my Hotmail account and he did not stop to say my password was wrong. I tried a few times. I was surprised and also a bit worried. I had to do with the situation where a friend of mine had his account hacked, so I knew that it was likely my email it was. My main concern was to see my emails exposed. I have absolutely nothing to hide, really, but there are personal stuff on other people and I would feel bad if it was released.
I received a message from Lex who said: ' what is happening? ".". I had no idea what he wanted to say, and then I realized that if my email had been hacked, maybe someone hacked into my PokerStars account. I checked Twitter to see if there was anything on this subject, and I saw a response indicating a hand I played against takechip the previous night. At this time, I feared the worst. I contacted my assistant Patty to see if she could connect to my email account and I called my agent Brian to find if there was activity on my account Stars.
I had news of return fairly quickly that the hacker had access to my account and that he made a "joyride". It is something I will never understand. It has no money to a particular player dumpe, he just distributed it, like that, with several players on multiple tables, losing $61,000 of my money. I do not know why it has not emptied my account, but I am grateful that he did not.
In such cases, it is clearly stated in the PokerStars user agreement that if your email is hacked, you will be not refunded by the company... no matter who you are. Since then, it is clear that my account has been hacked, and it wasn't the fault of PokerStars in any way and I have to redeem the loss. Since I've essentially lost a million dollars a few days earlier, $61,000 doesn't bother me in addition to measure. I was just happy to find my e-mail account.
There is an ongoing investigation, of course, and I hope they catch the guy. I hope that the good old Las Vegas rules are applied in cases like this, where you could take the guy in the desert for an afternoon and get some justice, but alas, we live more in this world. I believe that an appropriate sentence would be some quick sticks of baseball to the groin area, and perhaps castration, but thats just my opinion. :-)
Many have asked me if I was using a RSA token. The answer is no, but I'll use it in future into my PokerStars account. The truth is that I had never really understood the technology behind it and I felt that it was a bit of trouble to use. So I chose not to. Now I recommend that you get a: it is actually simpler than you think. It's like a small Keyring and the only way to access your account, it is entering a number that appears on the button. This number changes during each connection. In this way, an attacker should also have on hand the RSA token to access your account. I think they sell about $15 and you can use your FPPS to buy it in the PokerStars VIP store. The truth is that with a security RSA, PokerStars security token becomes as solid as rock. If someone is able to hack your email account, it will not be able to access your PokerStars account.
So, in short... the money is gone. I do not get any special treatment in this case. If money had been dumped to an account and the player attempted to cash, I imagine that something could be done, but this is not what happened here. You cannot ask players who have won the money against the hacker simply you back. This simply isn't even an option. I accept the decision and think it is quite fair. In fact, there are precedents because it happened to other people. Therefore under no circumstance, I would have agreed to special treatment. This a me has also not been offered, but even if it did, I would have found it totally unfair. »
Discuss the history of the hacking of Daniel Negreanu, as well as ways to secure your email account and your poker accounts, by clicking the following link: the Daniel Negreanu PokerStars account has been hacked.
