If you have a gambling problem, you can do something drastic but ultimately helpful: you can put yourself on a “self-exclusion” list that means you no longer receive e-mails or promotions from gambling companies. You can self-exclude from both real-life casinos and their online counterparts, so you won’t be allowed to play. The problem comes when something goes wrong, and those customers receive an e-mail blast.

That’s what happened to more than 250 self-proclaimed problem gamblers who had asked to be excluded from the online gambling sites of Caesars Interactive. In February and March of this year, those people who had asked to be put on the self-exclusion list received mailings from Caesars Interactive Entertainment New Jersey.

Online gambling became legal in New Jersey about a year ago, and this was the state’s first case testing the Division of Gaming Enforcement’s ability to regulate casinos that operate online. The state imposed a $10,000 civil penalty on Caesars (not “Caesar’s”) for the lapse.

The company says that they weren’t intentionally targeting problem gamblers, but blamed the problem on a “software lapse” on the back end of their promotional systems.

“Software issue” caused casino to e-mail promotions to compulsive gamblers [Ars Technica]

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