Affiliation Policy concerning privacy / anonymity

[hawthorne]

I plan to set up a poker website for the German and also International market.
I just read the terms and conditions of the GNUF affiliate prgram and saw, that the owner of the website, as indicated by the WHOIS, has to be the person registered with the GNUF account.
In Germany we do have the problem that online poker for money is not legal and advertising is prohibited. So in order to be safe in this respect, I´d need to set up the website with a provider that doesn´t give out my private data.

Does only GNUF poker have this clause?
How do other rooms treat this?

I already found out that almost all poker websites are run by persons that are not mentioned in the WHOIS.

[erich4711]

I am in the Austrian market and here is the problem the same. I have my sites running with godaddy.com, you can buy additional "privacy", so WHOIS is always godaddy. I am now 5 years in the market and had never a problem with a casino or a pokerroom with this case. I must say, i am not offering GNUF poker, I even dont know them. And with my rooms I really dont have any troubles (everest, pkr, party, pokerstars, fulltilt, poker.com, pacific and so on ...)

[hawthorne]

Hi Erich,

GNUF is a relatively new room in the microgaming system. I don´t know why I read the terms of GNUF, but I browsed some directories and stumbled upon them.

[erich4711]

i never had read the terms and anyone knows my sites - the advice to go to godaddy came from everest, and as i said, i had never troubles - maybe you should take an other room instead!

[NewPokerGirl]

I think godaddy is great host. They have all kinda of extra features that are easy to install...joomla...wordpress...forums...ect

[Jeremy]

Before anyone jumps the gun here, there is good reason why GNUF put this in their T&C's. I am certain the guys at GNUF put this in their T&C's as a protection against fraud. With that said however, knowing them, if you simply explained your situation and exactly why the WHOIS is not in your name, I'm sure they will allow you to promote.

We had the same problem on our network with the Asian affiliates that scammed us out of $25K in CPA fraud. None of these guys submitted sites that were actually registered to them.

Just because your site isn't registered directly to you doesn't mean you are up to no good, it just raises a red flag that needs a simple explanation. And your explanation in respect to the German market sounds fine.

[hawthorne]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Before anyone jumps the gun here, there is good reason why GNUF put this in their T&C's. I am certain the guys at GNUF put this in their T&C's as a protection against fraud. With that said however, knowing them, if you simply explained your situation and exactly why the WHOIS is not in your name, I'm sure they will allow you to promote.

I wrote them an email about two days ago and didn´t receive an answer yet.

That´s why I opened this thread. Thanks for the responses so far - I´d be glad if we could collect some more opinions and experiences concerning affiliation in markets where promotion is prohibited by law.

By the way, how do American affiliates manage this? How do they get paid right now? Neteller isn´t a way right now, I suppose.

[hawthorne]

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Just because your site isn't registered directly to you doesn't mean you are up to no good, it just raises a red flag that needs a simple explanation. And your explanation in respect to the German market sounds fine.

So, I register a domain with Godaddy.
Then I contact the poker room and tell them that I can´t show my true identity because it´s not allowed to promote real money online poker in Germany. Did I get it right, is there something else to keep in mind, when getting started?

[stiankr]

Its the same in Norway that promoting poker and gambling is illegal. But this only apllies to you if you have a .no domain. If you have a .com, .net or similar there is nothing they can do about it. Maybe its the same in Germany?

[hawthorne]

@stian

Perhaps that´s the same in Germany
But as I don´t know for sure, I´d like to hear how the others have solved this issue. In fact, there are not many countries where you can promote legally, so there should be a number of different approaches to be found.

greetz