Why you Shouldn’t Create Duplicate Accounts at an Online Casino

Posted by BonusTracker | April 1, 2008 .

multiple Photo by dusdin

With all the no deposit casino bonuses and generous match deposit sign up bonuses going around it is tempting for many players to create multiple accounts in order to claim these time and again. It might seem like a smart idea, you may even think you are ‘getting away with it’, but I guarantee that you are ruining any chance you have of making a withdrawal.

Why casinos don’t like multiple accounts

All signup bonuses have one basic goal: to attract new players. Active players are the lifeblood of any casino and in today’s competitive environment Casino Operators know they need to entice new players to play at their site, usually with some form of bonus. The size of the offer isn’t the only factor players look at of course, but many casinos offer signup bonuses that put the odds of winning in the players favor.

Remember, these Casino Operator’s are running a business and they figure that any money they lose on the initial player acquisition, they’ll more than make back over time as the player continues to have confidence in their brand. It should be pretty obvious that if a casino is giving away free money, they won’t be too happy with those who make multiple claims in an attempt to abuse the system. Unless the casino specifically says that you can claim a bonus multiple times, you can be pretty certain that you will always find something in the terms and conditions stating that a player may only claim the bonus once… and they’re not talking about a single player account, but you as a person - more than that, they usually specify only one per IP address or household too, so don’t think you can pretend your partner or housemate signed up with the other account, that’s not going to work.

So how do they know if I’ve opened multiple accounts?

Every casino handles this slightly differently, but there are a lot of commonalities that you’ll find everywhere. Here is a basic overview of the process:

When do they check? A few casinos check for duplicate accounts as soon as you register (before you can claim a bonus), but the majority of casinos don’t check until a bit later. Some places won’t bother to check at all unless you attempt to make a withdrawal - and that’s usually when players claiming no deposit bonuses with multiple accounts have their accounts closed and winnings voided.

What do they check? The actual casino software will do a decent job of blocking the casual creation of duplicate accounts, but it’s not that difficult to circumvent. The back-end administration application for the casinos have several in depth reports that can look at every aspect of a players account. Each software platform handles this differently, but essentially they all track the same information. As you can probably guess: name, email, address and IP address are obvious details for the casino staff to flag possible duplicate accounts, but it goes a lot deeper than that. When you downloaded, installed the casino’s gaming application and registered your account details, they start tracking everything they can possibly get and it’s probably safe to say that they know a lot more about you (and specifically your computer) than you are probably aware of.

Here’s a brief list of what most casinos check to determine if multiple accounts have been opened by the same person (some details prove duplication more than others):

Your name
Your address
Your email
Your telephone number
Your IP address
Your hard drive serial number
Your windows version and serial number
Your browser, resolution / color depth
Your password
Anything else they can get their hands on, additional ID verification etc.

As you can see, the chances of being discovered are pretty high - even if you use more than one computer, you’ve still got to identify yourself at some point if you want to be paid and there is likely to be enough supporting evidence to give you away.

What can you do to avoid being banned

I’m not going to tell you how to ‘beat’ the system, I’m not sure you can really be 100% sure of doing that anyway - I’ve seen some pretty elaborate setups come undone, and the more complex you make it, the bigger the trouble you can find yourself in. What I will pass on though are a few tips to help make sure you don’t do anything against the rules or something that may lead to you accidentally being banned.

1. If you’ve played at the casino in the past (6 months+), then depending on the casino, you may or may not be eligible to play new signup bonuses. The best way to be sure is to email that casinos customer support and ask them if you have signed up for an account with them previously. If you do just decide to make a new account, you may be lucky and able to collect your winnings, but don’t be too surprised if they flag you for having a duplicate account.

2. Don’t try to scam the system by creating duplicate accounts - they really are quite simple to detect in most cases.

3. Choose a strong password - while having the same password as another player obviously won’t flag you as a duplicate by itself, it will bring up your account in the duplicate reports for further examination and depending on how rushed for time the person is checking these reports (and if a lot of duplicate accounts are being created at that time), it’s possible that they may accidentally ban your account without considering the reasons properly. This can usually be rectified with an email to support asking what’s going on, but it’s still an inconvenience that is easily avoided.

Whatever you do, don’t choose ‘123456′ as your password, it is quite scary how many people use that on their accounts! Just remember to accept the bonuses for what they are intended for and you’ll be fine, trying to scam the system and claim more than your fair share will just void your winnings and get you banned from that casino… it’s hard enough to win at the casinos as it is, don’t give them an excuse to cancel your withdrawals.

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