F-Train's comment

There would be more guarantees for your money if you had better AV protection or didn't download pr0n and warez that are infected with keyloggers. I'm not sure why the risk that you might download a keylogger should be shifted to FTP.

They gave you the hand histories and the IP address. What more should they do?

You also don't address the fact that, as far as FTP is concerned, you could be trying to defraud them. How does Full Tilt know that you didn't ask a friend to login to your account from a different site and dump your chips?

Thanks F-Train, I was waiting for someone to make this argument.

#1 - FTP is convinced that chip dumping DID NOT occur. So how could I be defrauding them? If chip dumping did occur, they would take the money from the recipient and give it back to me. Where's the profit in that?

That suspicion goes both ways, doesn't it? What's to prevent FTP from taking my money, doctoring some hand histories and making up an IP? Absoultely nothing. I have no way to verify that those hands actually occurred. I don't think this, but I don't have a good argument to convince a more paranoid person that it's not the case.

#2 - It's the assumption that I have a keylogger or spyware on my computer that bothers me. What if I didn't? My Anti-Virus protection is up to date. I've run every scanner I could download, even paying for some so I could find out if my system had been infected. Other than tracking cookies, they have found absolutely nothing. This is a brand new laptop install with basically nothing but OS and poker rooms and Yahoo Instant Messenger installed. If I can prove that my security was not at fault, will that get me anywhere? NO. What's more frustrating is that since I couldn't find anything, I have no idea if I am safe RIGHT NOW. They're very quick to assume the problem is totally my fault, and I'm not convinced. Especially as more and more people contact me who have had similar problems.

Is there a virus out there stealing FTP passwords? Is there spyware going around that steals that information? What is is called? Where has it been sighted? How many people have been affected? What SPECIFICALLY should I be on the lookout for?

#3 - What more should they do? More awareness that this is a possibility might have been nice.

I was at the blogger event in July when Howard Lederer spoke about how much his company does to protect customers from being ripped off. I didn't hear him mention this possibility. I was laboring under the false assumption that if something like this happened, FTP would be there to protect me. I was wrong and I learned my lesson.

I'm certainly not saying that any other poker room would handle this any differently, or that another poker system is safer that FTP. I actually thought that FTP was different, somehow better than most places that would just say "you're screwed, we're sorry." I was DEAD WRONG. My bad.

Had I been more aware, I would have left much less money in my account. But FTP doesn't want the constant deposit/withdrawal process that might actually have kept my money safe, because that would affect their bottom line. But now I know better, and hopefully anyone that reads this knows better too.

I'm not blaming FTP for ripping me off. I'm not saying people shouldn't play at FTP. I'm just saying don't leave big piles of money there. Yes, that's a pain in the ass, but unless you want to take that risk, you should do it.