A company in Cambridge is developing a software program to help protect online casino players from fraud.  The company is just as new as their software.  It is called Featurespace and was formed in 2005 by members at the Cambridge University Engineering Department.  The company has been looking at behavioral analysis to help find a way to protect online casinos from fraud.

Featurespace has made a deal with King.com.  King.com is a company that specialises in skill games like puzzles, action games, strategic games, bingo, sports, and card games.  The software from Featurespace will protect players that use King.com from computer bots that might try to compete with human players for cash prizes. This has been an issue for many casinos.

Befair has also made a contract for a similar technology.  They are in discussion with online gambling and finance companies.  King.com is just one of the latest deals Featurespace is making with online casinos.  The company has 15 people working currently and is looking for more software engineers to help continue their work in software development for online casinos and other industries.

The software will work based on behavior patterns that it will look for.  It uses statistics to determine if a pattern of behavior is normal or not.  The analysis can then show if fraud is occurring.  It could be gambling patterns that are inappropriate or if a computer bot is being used to gamble instead of a human.  When computer bots get into an online casino it can cause a massive disruption.  It could start to steal money from others accounts or just give the impression that a live human is playing.  A computer that is playing certain skill games will not have the emotional component.  This means it will make better decisions, and thus the computer bot can win more money than a human player.

Online casinos do not allow the use of computer bots.  They do have automatic systems for slot machines when a person wants to get up and walk around, but the slot machine is different.  It is using a program built into it by the software company and the game is truly one of chance to begin with.  Featurespace has been a slow starter, but they are now booming with business.  Online casino players may be seeing a lot more news on the company and their protection from fraud in coming months.