Good post, Steve. I had been thinking about some of the same things. The public IS becoming more aware of identity theft, and the ability to keep private and off the radar in some ways is becoming more difficult because of the government and the current state of the nation.
There are a couple of good websites about these issues, both by authors. The first is How to Be Invisible which was written by JJ Luna. Jack Luna was a privacy consultant in Spain under the dictatorship there–he’s a fascinating individual, and his book is also very interesting.
Another good one is Frank Abagnale’s Site. Frank is the man whose character was featured in the movie Catch Me If You Can. He’s a renowned speaker on preventing identity theft now. I’m in the middle of his book The Art of the Steal right now.
And more to the point, the online casinos need to understand that privacy issues like this are going to hurt retention and conversion ratios. When your market is really big, it’s tempting to just burn through a lot of customers, because it’s easy to believe that demand is truly infinite. Reality is that demand is finite, and you don’t want to leave a bunch of scorched earth in your wake.