Germany’s Treaty on Gaming allows supervisors to use financial service providers to combat unauthorized providers of online gambling. Constitutional lawyer Matthias Rossi warns against “data protection collateral damage”.
Mr. Rossi says that relevant measures are required so that credit and payment institutions may collect and evaluate a range of data. The personal information of players, such as name, place and date of birth, nationality and address are likely to be used when combating illegal gambling.
In order to find out whether a customer indulges in such activities and to determine, for example, whether game participation takes place in Austria or abroad, financial service providers also need geolocation data, such as IP addresses. There is also the possibility of locking players’ bank accounts if money transfers are identified as suspicious.
According to Rossi, data collection and their disclosure to the supervisory authorities by the financial services companies without the consent of the subjects involved is inadmissible under current laws.
Full article: Golem.de (German)
