Should Betfair be more secure?
I’ve put a poll up on whether Betfair should be more secure, read on and vote.
As you may / or not be aware, Betfair suffered a security breach not so long ago but choose not to inform customers after consulting on the risks involved in the breach. Personally I feel, whether there was a risk or not, people should have been informed.
The following was recently pointed out to me in the Betfair terms and conditions under the “limitations of liability” section: –
“We will not be liable to you for any loss that you may incur as a result of misuse of your password, or in the case of the Telephone Service, of your telephone access number, and we accept no liability resulting from its unauthorised use, whether fraudulent or otherwise.”
Restrictions in liability are quite common and I fully understand why they are there. But I was surprised recently by reports of people who have had their accounts defrauded on Betfair and who where subsequently quoted the above sections when asking about what happens next. The answer was “nothing” based on the above terms, the money was gone and that was it.
The net upshot is that if you are defrauded or if there is a system or operator error, it seems Betfair will not re-imburse your funds. Basically any money you have deposited is at real risk of total loss in the event of fraud or error. The people who have been affected and come forward to me explained in detail the cause of the loss and the fact that from the evidence they gave, it was obviously not a transaction taken by them. But that didn’t seem to matter.
This begs the question of if security protocols need beefing up at Betfair. Surely if your money is at such risk you should have the ability to restrict or limit your activity? Restricting to certain IP addresses or sports, or territories, or values would make perfect sense? It would make fraudulent activity much harder and re-assure people who have decent sums of money on deposit.
I’m not comfortable with the risks involved in the current process despite having been unaffected. I’m worried about what could happen and would like to see some changes. If you agree vote appropriately!
In the meantime, make sure you take sensible security precautions to limit any potential issues. Keeping as small balance as possible and regularly changing your password are two of the key elements. Ensuring your have valid anti-virus software etc is another. There are others, but don’t wait till its too late to take action. I’m not saying there is any increased risk in the system , but it’s better to be safe than sorry!
Category: Betfair
