Gambling Commission 'Single Customer View'

[newcustomeroffer]

Interesting angle that the Gambling Commission are investigating here with trying to create an industry-wide view of gamblers' behaviour by creating a single centralised view of their activity:

Experts from the gambling and technology industries will meet on 11 and 12 February to make progress on creating a single industry-wide solution to help reduce gambling harm, in particular where customers have multiple online accounts.Over 100 experts will attend the Gambling Commission event in Birmingham where they will unpick the challenges associated with achieving a ‘single customer view’.The initiative is being supported by the Betting and Gaming Council with representatives from the Information Commissioners Office also attending to raise awareness of individual rights and to discuss issues around privacy.Neil McArthur, chief executive of the Gambling Commission said: “We recognise that keeping a customer safe where operators currently only have a partial view of a customer’s behaviour is a challenge. That is why we are bringing together experts from outside and within the gambling industry to explore how technology could create a single customer view, as it has the potential to significantly improve customer protection. “I’m really looking forward to seeing what is possible. We are constantly looking for opportunities to reduce gambling-related harm and there is always more to be done.“Using technology to facilitate a single view of consumer activity is one of a range of actions we are pursuing to make gambling safer.”The Gambling Commission is currently pushing the industry to make progress in raising standards and reducing harm in areas such as ethical game design, the use of advertising technology, and incentives for high value customers.The Commission has set tight deadlines and expects to see progress by the end of March this year.To hear from some of the experts at the Single Customer View event, please follow the Gambling Commission LinkedIn page.

Full details here.

GDPR/ICO issues aside, I've been involved in attempts to bring data together from disparate sources in the past and it's an incredibly complex thing to do. Clearly for identifying problem gamblers there will be huge benefits if they can pull it off, will watch their progress with interest.

As an aside, it will undoutedly highlight the extent of bonus abuse/fraud/duplication which is rife with some operators too if they can truly make it customer-centric.

[universal4]

As an aside, it will undoutedly highlight the extent of bonus abuse/fraud/duplication which is rife with some operators too if they can truly make it customer-centric.

This is a good point, but you just know they will mess it up first

Rick
Universal4

[Christiaan]

All the details of how much people gamble at the different operators. As all the operators will have to put data inside, they must make sure the operators will not be able to extract any data from it.
Imagine this database being hacked and getting insight in this data. That is worth a fortune.

[TheGooner]

Shades of big data / big brother here.

It probably can be done quite easily for 90% of customers by matching addresses, phones, or id documents. There will be mismatches of course, failures to link, and incorrect linking, that's to be expected if there is no single standard ID document.

But in the current climate of personal privacy and data security - the big issues are NOT technical - they're cultural.

Exactly what purpose does this database have? Does the welfare of less than 1% justify privacy issues for 99%?
Who can can access it? Companies, Government agencies? IRD/IRS?
How can players see their own data, get it corrected, and/or opt out (if that's allowed)?

How will this databaser prevent problem gambling ?
(Given that the problem gamblers are the ones likely to circumvent the system with dodgy details)

It would take time. effort and a lot of money - and I don't see any potential for payback.
I don't expect it to get any traction at all.

[universal4]

Excellent points Gooner, and we can only hope they will ask the very same questions you did, since NOT asking those questions will certainly lead to abuse of the data in some way, and the entire exercise not doing what it is intended to do.

Rick
Universal4

[Maxfalcon]

There will be abuse if done. 100% certain. Data is the new gold.

[nwalker]

Every person in the UK has a unique identifier (a National Insurance Number), so technically a new database could be created quite easily. Whether it could or would is a different matter.

[Sherlock]

It is certain that if such database is done, it will be fcked up.
But the good news is that once it is fcked up, they can not *** it up again.
The bad news is that once all the data will be public, there will be no affiliate industry. Which after all is maybe better than to read about "new opportunities in the UK and such bs".

With data which are gold the world generally is waiting for really big fckups like leaking and abusing literally everything. We need to really see how GDPR is totally impotent. We need to see more abuses of FB data in elections and we need much bigger extremes than Trump and Johnson to abuse it. Only after that - after incredible economical and social loses - the radical changes will come but only for the survivors. The solution will be some truly anonymous but fully transparent (open source) distributed ledger technologies.

Really some bad things must happen. The technology is here, is new, but is not that new - but is progress done? No way. Everybody is slow with adoption and only kicking to the ass and fight for survival will change things to drastic adoption.

What the politicians come with are solutions for 20th century.