Mar 17, 2005, In a statement today, sent to John E, and Marlene Derossett, owners of Gambling Portal Webmasters Association, http://www.gpwa.org , Talia Paschini, Public Relations Manager for Gambling Federation, http://www.gamblingfederation.com , announced the resignation of Gambling Federation from membership of the Gambling Portal Webmasters Association, effective immediately.
Gambling Federation has been in partnership with GPWA for sometime now, and it’s sad to see them go, especially under these circumstances’ stated John. ‘Gambling Federation has taken steps to correct the situation, and I hope that we can once again work together soon’.
The situation being spoken of, involves the altering of the hosts file, which resides in the root directory of ones computer. The Hosts file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. This file is loaded into memory at startup, then Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. This prevents access to the listed sites by redirecting any connection attempts back to the local machine. What they had hoped to achieve, was to prevent the spamming of their clients from certain other places, who allegedly had possession of the players database, which was stolen from Gambling Federation some time ago. You can use a HOSTS file to block ads, banners, cookies, web bugs, and even most hijackers.
During talks, in which GPWA imposed sanctions upon Gambling Federation, who readily accepted these sanctions, it was agreed that Gambling Federation would pay a fine in the amount of $5,000.00 to Gambler’s Anonymous. That agreement was Reached on March 14, 2005, and Gambling Federation decided today, that they would also act on a self imposed sanction of resigning membership.
Part of the statement from Ms. Paschini read: ‘We are voluntarily stepping out of GPWA forums so that GPWA can go back to normal. We think you have had enough stress and emails so far by the so called “malware” situation. Everything has been explained and told about this issue, there is nothing more left to say. We made an error, we are remorseful, and we repaired it. You recognized this in us and we are grateful.
Gambling Federation has in fact, always been responsive to queries and requests in the past, and I have no doubt that they will work diligently to set things right and regain the trust that they once had and worked hard for from players and affiliates alike. I for one, look forward to the day when this happens, and we can once again work together as we have in the past.’ Stated John Derossett.
For more information about the GPWA please visit http://www.gpwa.org.