What Stays in Vegas (44 page)

5
. When I went with LaBarba on a short drive in Dallas she partially drove over an elevated medium in the middle of the road, then did not notice pedestrians in a white-lined designated crosswalk until just seconds before they stepped in front of the car. I felt slightly carsick. “I know I'm not a great driver,” she said sheepishly.

6
. Author interview with friend-turned-informant, November 1, 2012.

7
. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign transcript, October 1, 2008, as submitted in Prall's 2010 clemency petition.

8
. When I initially asked to visit, I was told I would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring me from ever revealing the company's address. In the end Prall did allow the visit to take place without me signing the release, with a promise that I not disclose the office's exact location.

9
. According to FBI statistics for the last several years. See
www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
.

10
. See
www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/fingerprints_biometrics/iafis/iafis_facts
, accessed March 7, 2014.

11
. Each state maintains its own public records laws. For a state-by-state rundown of what is made public, see
http://www.lc.org/hotissues/2001/aba_1-18/public_records_laws_by_state.htm
.

12
. See
www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/2012/09/is-kyle-prall-an-extortionist.html
.

13
. By 2014 Prall was charging subscribers $12.95 a month with a six-month commitment though his site
bustedgrid.com
.

14
. “Nevada has a rather archaic public records law which is very vague, so we have not had much success working with agencies in this state,” Prall says.

15
. “Busted! Grid Establishes Strong Relationships at Crime Stoppers International Conference,” press release, November 9, 2012, at
www.prweb.com/releases/2012/11/prweb10112237.htm
.

16
. See, for example,
bustedgrid.com/uncategorized/bustedgrid-com-announces-milestone-of-over-9-million-arrest-records-in-the-busted-mugshots-database
.

17
. Details of one class-action case are at
www.counselor.pro/practice-areas/class-action-lawsuit-against-mugshot-websites/
. Another site,
classactionagainstmugshotwebsites.com/wp/
, gives more details on the latest developments related to mug shot businesses.

18
.
Inside Edition
(CBS), November 19, 2013.

Chapter 13: Internet Advertising

1
. Pamela E. Swett, S. Jonathan Wiesen, and Jonathan R. Zatlin (eds.),
Selling Modernity: Advertising in Twentieth-Century Germany
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 16–17.

2
. As listed in early 2013 at
m6d.com/who-we-are/press/
.

3
. The company also allows people to opt out of advertising delivered by Dstillery. See
http://dstillery.com/privacy.php
.

4
. Dstillery is just one of many companies seeking to profit off insights gained from tracking users' online activities. If you want to track the companies tracking you, you can install a browser plug-in such as disconnect.me or Ghostery. For example, when I visited the celebrity gossip site
TMZ.com
, Ghostery indicated a swarm of tracking under way: eighteen ad networks, behavioral data providers, and web publishers, some well-known, such as disconnect.me or Google and Facebook, others obscure. These included Audience Science, Criteo, DoubleClick, Facebook Connect, Google+1, gumgum, Kaltura, MediaMind, Meebo Bar, NetRatings, CiteCensus, Omniture, Quantcast, Quigo AdSonar, Realtime, ScoreCard Research Beacon, StumbleUpon Widgets, and Tynt Insight.

5
. Author interview with Andrew Pancer, February 13, 2013.

6
. This site appears to have come into existence in 2012 and gone offline in mid-2013, according to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The site at the time had a tag on the bottom reading, “Copyright © 2012 Alphabird, LLC.” See
web.archive.org/web/20130515000000*/http://www.iamcatwalk.com
.

7
. This site lists Brad Feniger as “Founder/Photographer/Editor.” He said the site is part of Bluefin Media, which operates sites including
GossipCenter.com
,
DIYFashion.com
,
RecipeCorner.com
,
Celebrity-Gossip.net
,
HighFashionMagazine.com
, and
CelebSpin.com
. He said the company's sites together attract fifty to sixty million visitors a month, often through banner ads on its different sites. When I asked about click fraud, he referred me to the CEO of Bluefin Media, Brad Mandell, and then hung up. Mandell later said his site had acquired
therisinghollywood.com
in late 2013 from Feniger, so he would not know about the period during which the site came to the attention of data scientist Perlich. “There is no way that I can speak on behalf of TRH for any activity on the site prior to Bluefin Media recently taking over,” he said. “When it comes to sites operated by Bluefin Media, we work with multiple third-party companies who provide real-time solutions to prevent non-human traffic from ever reaching our sites.” Email to author, March 15, 2014. Feniger did not return subsequent calls for further comment.

8
. This site appears to have gone offline in 2013.

9
. This site also went offline sometime after Perlich and Stitelman learned of it in their models.

10
. Finding a human running the site is not easy. Efforts to contact someone at
ChinaFlix.com
failed as email addresses given on its privacy policy and other sections of the site bounced back.

11
. See
www.linkedin.com/company/AlphaBird
and news releases from 2012 and 2013, including
http://is.gd/uQjyui
and
http://is.gd/bB7ZAO
.

12
. Author interview, February 7, 2013.

13
. See
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMOKOZEktxg&feature=youtu.be
.

14
. See
www.upgradevisits.com/how-it-works/
.

15
. Conference call with author, March 18, 2013.

16
. See
www.fulltraffic.net/global
, accessed December 29, 2013.

17
. “Alphabird changed its name to Emerge Digital Group last year based on an acquisition we did in the APAC region and to better reflect our status (as a holding company for a portfolio of international digital marketing assets that we've acquired over the past few years),” Norlin said. Email to author, March 17, 2014.

18
. Email to author, March 14, 2014.

19
. See
Whiteops.com
, accessed on January 4, 2014.

Chapter 14: Seeking the Goldilocks Balance

1
. Adam Tanner, “Data Monitoring Saves Some People Money on Car Insurance, but Some Will Pay More,”
Forbes,
September 2, 2013.

2
. Author interview with Gary Loveman, December 12, 2012.

3
. Marketing to magazine subscriber lists remains a popular if basic technique largely unknown to those whose names are for sale. After the American Civil Liberties Union sent me a solicitation letter, I contacted the group's executive director to see where he had gotten my details. It turned out the organization bought the subscriber list from
Columbia Journalism Review
. Getting my name cost 10.5 cents. Adam Tanner, “I Caught the Guys Selling My Personal Information to the ACLU,”
Forbes
online, August 9, 2013.

4
. In 2013 Eskin became director of direct marketing at Time Warner Cable.

5
. Direct Marketing Association, customer relationship management and database marketing seminar, New York City, September 10–11, 2012.

6
. Eskin expressed her concerns in 2012. Today, those signing up for Godiva's Rewards Club must provide more details: a mailing address and birth date as well as name and email. This information makes it easy to cross-reference the dossier with that of other data brokers, or to sell the information to a data broker who might note that someone is a chocolate lover.

7
. Tim Suther, “Not all Data Is Created Equal (ii),” Acxiom Power-Point presentation, February 21, 2013.

8
. Author interview, March 7, 2014.

9
. Number of Total Rewards members from Joshua Kanter. Author interview, December 26, 2013.

10
. Caesars do not know exactly what percentage of total gamblers do not sign up, as they do not have a unique identifying number for such customers. Author interview with Joshua Kanter, December 26, 2013.

11
. That number is about average for casinos across Clark County, which allocated 20.8 percent of their expenses on comps, according to the 2013 State Gaming Abstract of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. A fifth of all rooms and food are given away, and 39 percent of all drinks are comped in Las Vegas and its surrounding county.

12
. Figure on active Total Rewards members from Jacqueline Beato, Caesars vice president of finance, from December 5, 2013, presentation to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, 2013 Leveraged Finance Conference. See
http://is.gd/5OEhef
.

13
. John Koster email to Joshua Kanter, November 14, 2012. As he learned more about the changes over the following days, Koster's fears lessened.

Chapter 15: New Frontiers in Customer Data

1
. Scott Dowty, email to author, March 18, 2014. Dowty estimates his company's market share at 65–70 percent.

2
. The company only gains personal information on ATM withdrawals when the person has also gotten credit or debit card or cash-checking services from GCA, something that happens infrequently, according to Dowty.

3
. CGA promotional video, at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRA84bbJc7k
. The company sets certain conditions on what data it will share: “Individual patron names and addresses cannot be queried unless they already exist in the customer's database or have made a GCA identified withdrawal at the client's property.” See “Proprietary Data Analysis Tool Gives Casino Operators True Understanding of Gaming Patrons,” press release, May 3, 2010.

4
. See
www.gcainc.com/business-intelligence-and-marketing/casino-share-intelligence/
.

5
. How does Dowty respond to Kanter's remarks? “I'm not really interested in what they think about our service because they have already made it clear they don't want to use it. We opted them out a while ago,” he says.

6
. Adam Tanner, “The Revolutionary Way Marketers Read Your Financial Footprints,”
Forbes,
December 16, 2013.

7
. Brubaker,
The Eye in the Sky
(J. M. Brubaker).

8
. Author interview, March 7, 2014.

9
. As of now the company sets limits on its card of $2,000 per day, $4,500 per week, $10,000 per month.

10
. See
www.mgmresorts.com/mobile/mirage.aspx
.

11
. Jumptap was renamed Millennial Media after that company acquired it in 2013.

12
. “Catalina Launches Personalized Mobile Advertising for CPG Brands,” press release, March 11, 2013.

13
. Statistic from Catalina spokeswoman Ally Peebles.

14
. Ibid.

15
. About the demographics of gamblers Kanter says, “It's a great exaggeration that customers are dying out.”

16
. Adam Tanner, “House of Cards,”
Worth Magazine,
February/March 2014.

Chapter 16: Casino Adventures in Three Cities

1
. Overall 2013 turned out to be an exceptionally lucky year for Kostel. He estimates he won $8,000 to $9,000 between Caesars and other casinos, with that June night at Caesars Palace a major contributor to his total winnings. Author interview, March 16, 2014.

2
. Caesars sold about $200 million in new shares in late 2013.

3
. Debt figure given on Caesars Entertainment Corporation Q4 2013 earnings call, March 11, 2014, at
http://is.gd/SuMaTv
.

4
. Sign-up statistics from Joshua Kanter, March 13, 2013.

5
. Statistic from Gary Loveman, March 11, 2014, conference call on fourth-quarter and full-year 2013 results.

Chapter 17: Embracing Outside Data

1
. David G. Schwartz,
Major Gaming Jurisdiction: Ten-Year Comparison
(Las Vegas: Center for Gaming Research, University Libraries, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2011).

2
. Loveman recalled the conversation in an interview with the author, December 12, 2012. Through a spokesman, Wynn said he did not remember the specific dialogue.

3
. Schwartz,
Major Gaming Jurisdiction
.

4
. Statistics from Macau Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, at
www.dicj.gov.mo/web/en/information/DadosEstat/2013/content.html#n1
. In another contrast with Las Vegas, slot machines make up only a small fraction of total casino revenue in Macau (4 percent in 2013). More than 90 percent of Macau's casino revenue came from the card game baccarat.