Casino employees on AP websites?

The following portion of a post from many years ago was on a blackjack-related website.

"The Internet is another major source of information for casino employees and specifically, surveillance spies. If you're a frequent user of advantage player sites, you've been had! These sites have more casino surveillance and floorpeople on them than there are feds monitoring the websites that sell plans for homemade explosives."

What are your thoughts and/or reactions to this?

bigplayer: It is probably true. Not every casino has someone in surveillance who monitors the discussion boards, but many do and many casino consultants check these pages regularly. There is no security check that’s possible to ferret out these undesirables from Green Chip membership -- you can just make up a name and give a credit card number and you're in. That is why you should be careful about what you say. Your audience is the casino (your customer) and other advantage players (your competitors).

Casino management does not bother with pages like this. Game protection from advantage players is an issue for them, but has never been their primary concern. They're more concerned with customer service, training, hiring, and scheduling of employees, and keeping their bosses happy.

21forme: Use common sense. Over the years, I have identified four forum members by their handles, simply by seeing them in action in casinos and putting two and two together from their posts.

A little common sense and discretion can prevent this. Examples:

1. Don't post details about a trip or casino experience for at least a month of it happening; longer if it's likely to be truly memorable to casino staff. Change unimportant details. Ex. - if the casino you just played is testing out a new game or side bet for a game manufacturer, don't post about it until it's elsewhere, too.
2. Don't post specifics about the local casinos you play and where they are located.
3. Your handle should not include your real name or a physical characteristic. Ex. - there's a poster on another forum whose handle made perfect sense to me after seeing his physical deformity. To mikepotato -- hopefully your name isn't really Mike and MP aren't your initials.
4. Use a different email address for the blackjack forums. Ex. - there was a new poster a few years ago whose email address led to his name, occupation, office address, etc. There's another poster who used an email address that he also used on another forum to solicit Bangladesh prostitutes, which also included his name.
5. Don't have a Facebook page that includes other AP’s or teammates as friends. Ex. - there was a story in the book What Stays in Vegas about a team that casino surveillance put together by looking at the Facebook page of one member.

Sirwongsalot: It’s so pathetic and sad that someone who makes barely more than minimum wage for watching a camera all day trolls around on these boards trying to out card counters. Get a life, casino creeps.

Originally published on bj21.com Green Chip, edited for this format.