CoinPoker Anti-Cheating Features Gather TONS of User Data

Online crypto-currency poker site CoinPoker has publicly boasted many times about its efforts to protect game integrity. However, it turns out that the sophisticated tools it employs to bust cheaters also permit it to spy on its own users and gain access to all kinds of customer information that has nothing to do with policing the games.

Thorough Investigation

Much of the information regarding the CoinPoker client's inner workings was revealed by reporter David Burke in an article for Poker Industry News. He based his write-up on reverse-engineering the CoinPoker software.

What he found was worrisome to any advocate of consumer privacy and data protection. According to David's analysis, BetSignal – the anti-cheating component of the CoinPoker software – is able to do the following:

• Compile a list of all programs running on the user's computer
• Read the titles of every window open on the desktop
• Track mouse movements
• Gather hardware and device details, like the model of graphics card being used
• Obtain the MAC addresses of certain networking infrastructure
• Capture screenshots not just of the active window or primary monitor but all connected displays

It is this last piece of the puzzle that's so troubling. Many of the other capabilities of BetSignal have already been used for years by other sites, most notably PokerStars, to help police their games. But capturing and storing images of everything on a player's desktop seems to be taking things to extremes that have not yet been explored.

It's one thing to read the open processes list and see that an individual is browsing Chrome, has MS Word open, and is communicating on Telegram. It's quite another to read the personal account details on his bank's website, look at confidential corporate information contained in his work document, and monitor his communications with friends and family in real time.

Privacy Policy Deceptive?

CoinPoker has a nine-page Privacy Policy, linked from the bottom of its website. There's a lot of confusing legalese in portions of this document, but the section entitled “Personal Data We Collect,” appears clear and straightforward enough.

It lists five categories of data that CoinPoker collects along with specific types of data within these categories. The five categories are: Account and Identification Information, verification and compliance information pertaining to Anti-Money Laundering policies, Financial and Transaction Information, Technical and Usage Information, and Communications Information.

The one we're interested in right now is “Technical and Usage Information.” Here we discover that CoinPoker collects:

• IP address and general location indicators
• Device and browser information
• Login timestamps and activity logs
• Cookies and similar technologies

There's no indication, from this fairly innocuous list, that CoinPoker can grab a snapshot of currently running processes, log and track mouse movements, and store images of the contents of multiple monitors.

Story Being Suppressed?

Reaction from the player community has been muted. It seems that Poker Industry News' findings were not covered in many other poker media outlets.

Of course, many of the most prominent of these online poker news sources are owned by the parent company of Coin Poker, ClickOut Media/Finixio. They include CardPlayer, PokerScout, and PokerStrategy. It makes sense that they would not wish to report negatively on their related site Coin Poker.

There are indications that Clickout Media or some other entity is trying to keep this story under wraps. Poker Industry News posted on X that they have received a DMCA takedown notice from Google:

There's no apparent reason why the article in question would infringe on anyone's copyright. The DMCA notice thus appears to be merely a mechanism for burying the story.

Reactions

Most players are becoming increasingly suspicious of CoinPoker's way of doing business. There are a few who don't necessarily see a problem with CoinPoker collecting reams of data on users if it helps them keep the games honest. However, the majority think that the BetSignal module goes a step too far, especially with the ability to take screenshots of windows completely unrelated to poker, and they're dismayed that the Privacy Policy doesn't disclose the full extent of the data collection.

Typical are the thoughts of Redditor “WSB_News” who had the following to say:

Other Details

During his investigation, Burke found several other troubling things about CoinPoker that aren't necessarily related to its anti-cheating mechanisms.

Some information is easily accessed from the poker client by any observer. One of these fields shows whether or not a player has completed the identity verification process. Anyone can see this information. While merely knowing whether or not an account is verified doesn't harm the games or enable cheating, there's no reason why this info should be made public.

There's also some indication that the built-in HUD developed by Coin Poker leaks data that someone else could use to create their own, more advanced HUD. This would give them a competitive advantage over other players because third-party HUDs are now banned at CoinPoker, so users are restricted to only the CoinPoker internal HUD unless they posses quite a bit of programming savvy.

The deep dive into Coin Poker's software revealed what are called “software-hygiene issues.” This refers to things like old directory paths remaining in the executable file, expired QA tokens, test account information contained in code, et cetera. They are more indications of poor programming techniques rather than any kind of malfeasance on the part of developers, but they do call into question the robustness and security of the poker client. Unless they were very careful, programmers could have left inadvertent back doors that could let hackers access the mountains of data gathered by BetSignal.

Other Poker Sites Beckon

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June 23, 2026 – by Max Golden, Editor-in-Chief