While bonus abuse is the most visible consequence of multi-accounting, the threat runs much deeper. These networks of fake accounts are a gateway to more severe financial crimes, including large-scale money laundering. Criminals use gaming platforms to legitimize illicit funds by distributing money across dozens of accounts, moving it through staged bets, and withdrawing it as “clean” winnings. This activity not only exposes your platform to financial loss but also places you at significant risk of steep regulatory fines and legal penalties. It forces operators to confront a serious compliance issue: what is multi-accounting in online gambling, and how can operators stop it? Understanding this connection is the first step to protecting your business from becoming an unwilling accomplice.
Key Takeaways
- Multi-accounting is more than just rule-breaking: It’s a calculated fraud tactic that directly drains your revenue through bonus abuse, rigs games with collusion, and exposes your platform to serious legal risks like money laundering.
- Cheaters use sophisticated tactics to appear legitimate: They rely on a combination of stolen identities, synthetic profiles, and digital tools like VPNs and device emulators to make each fake account look like a unique player, allowing them to bypass basic security checks.
- Build a defense that is both strong and seamless: The best approach combines multiple security layers, such as device fingerprinting and behavioral analytics, to catch fraudsters while using passive verification to ensure your real players have a smooth, uninterrupted experience.
What Is Multi-Accounting in Online Gambling?
Multi-accounting is when a single person creates multiple accounts on the same gambling platform. This practice, sometimes called “gnoming,” isn’t about having a spare account; it’s a deliberate strategy to cheat the system. The main goal is to take advantage of the valuable incentives platforms offer to attract new players. Think about all the welcome bonuses, free bets, and deposit matches you use to grow your user base. Fraudsters see these as a buffet, and they use multiple accounts to get more than their fair share.
This isn’t a victimless activity. When someone exploits your promotions, they directly drain your marketing budget and revenue. More importantly, this behavior creates an unfair playing field. It undermines the integrity of your platform and erodes the trust of your legitimate players who follow the rules. According to Veriff, the core of multi-accounting is creating many accounts to cheat the system, which is why gambling platforms explicitly forbid it in their terms of service. Stopping it is essential for protecting your business and maintaining a healthy, trustworthy community for your real players.
How Players Pull It Off
Fraudsters use a variety of simple and sophisticated tactics to create multiple accounts without being immediately detected. The most basic method involves signing up with slight variations of their personal information. As experts at SEON note, they create accounts using different names, email addresses, or physical addresses to repeatedly claim welcome bonuses and other promotional deals. This allows them to appear as unique new customers each time they sign up.
To cover their digital tracks, cheaters often use more advanced techniques. They might create new email addresses for each account, sometimes from the same device or IP address, hoping basic checks won’t catch the link. More determined fraudsters use tools like VPNs or proxy servers to hide their true location and make it seem like each account is being accessed from a different place. These methods are designed to bypass standard security measures and make each fraudulent account look like a legitimate, distinct player.
The Hidden Scale of the Problem
The financial and reputational damage from multi-accounting is staggering. It’s not just a minor annoyance; it’s a significant drain on the industry. In fact, the gambling and betting sector has seen fraud rates climb dramatically. According to research from FullStory, these sites lost over $1 billion to fraud in a single year, with incidents of multi-accounting fraud rising 64% since 2022. These numbers show a rapidly growing threat that directly impacts your bottom line.
Beyond the direct financial losses from bonus abuse, this activity poisons the well for your entire user base. When cheaters can operate freely, it undermines the fairness of your platform and damages your brand’s reputation. Legitimate players lose confidence in a system that can be so easily manipulated. This erosion of trust is one of the highest costs of all, as it can drive honest players away and make it harder to attract new ones.
What Fraudsters Do With Multiple Accounts
Creating multiple accounts is just the first step for a fraudster. The real damage happens next. Once they have a network of fake profiles, they can exploit your platform’s systems for financial gain, manipulate game outcomes, and even facilitate serious financial crimes. These actions don’t just hurt your bottom line; they systematically dismantle the trust and fairness that your player community is built on. Understanding their playbook is the first step toward building a stronger defense.
Exploit Bonuses and Promotions
One of the most common goals of multi-accounting is to abuse promotional offers. Your platform likely uses sign-up bonuses, free bets, and deposit matches to attract new players. While great for marketing, these promotions are a prime target for fraudsters. By creating dozens or even hundreds of accounts, a single person can claim a new-player bonus over and over again. This practice, often called bonus abuse, turns your customer acquisition budget into a direct financial loss. Instead of attracting legitimate, long-term players, you end up paying out cash to bad actors who have no intention of playing fairly.
Rig Games Through Collusion
In multiplayer games like poker, fraudsters use their network of accounts to collude and gain an unfair advantage. Imagine one person controlling multiple “players” at the same table. They can see more cards than anyone else and coordinate their accounts to cheat legitimate opponents out of their money. This tactic includes “chip dumping,” where a fraudster intentionally loses to another one of their own accounts to consolidate funds. This kind of cheating ruins the game for honest players. When your community feels the games are rigged, they lose trust in your platform’s integrity and eventually take their business elsewhere.
Open the Door to Money Laundering
Beyond cheating, multi-accounting opens the door to more severe criminal activity like money laundering. Gaming platforms can be an attractive vehicle for criminals looking to legitimize illicit funds. A fraudster can distribute dirty money across numerous fake accounts, then move it between them through staged bets or chip dumping. Once the funds are sufficiently mixed, they are withdrawn as “clean” winnings. This activity not only exposes your platform to financial losses but also puts you at risk of significant legal and regulatory penalties for facilitating financial crime through the use of mule accounts.
How Cheaters Stay Hidden
Fraudsters operating on gambling platforms are far more sophisticated than you might think. They are not just creating a second account with a spare email address. Instead, they use a combination of advanced techniques to make each fraudulent account appear as a unique, legitimate player. This allows them to fly under the radar of traditional security measures, which often look for obvious links between accounts, like a shared IP address or payment method. By systematically covering their tracks, they can operate dozens or even hundreds of accounts simultaneously, creating a significant drain on resources and revenue.
These bad actors are experts at deception, blending stolen information with technical tricks to build a convincing cover story for each identity. They know what security teams look for and have developed specific methods to sidestep those checks. For platforms, this creates a difficult challenge: how do you distinguish a network of fraudulent accounts from a crowd of genuine new players? Understanding their playbook is the first step toward building a defense that can actually stop them. Their strategies generally fall into three main categories: using compromised identities, hiding their digital location and device information, and creating entirely fake profiles from scratch. Each tactic requires a multi-layered approach to detection and prevention.
Use Fake or Stolen Identities
One of the most direct ways cheaters bypass security is by using someone else’s identity. Fraudsters often use stolen personal details or counterfeit ID documents to pose as new customers. This information is frequently purchased from dark web marketplaces, giving them access to everything they need to create a convincing profile that matches a real person. Because the stolen data is authentic, it can often pass initial Know Your Customer (KYC) checks that simply verify a name against a document number. This method allows a single fraudster to create multiple accounts, each tied to a different stolen identity, making them appear as a fresh set of legitimate players ready to exploit your platform’s welcome offers.
Mask Their Digital Footprints
Beyond using fake identities, clever fraudsters are masters of digital disguise. They rely on an arsenal of special tools to make each account’s technical signature look unique. These include emulators that make a desktop computer appear as a new mobile device, virtual machines that create a clean digital environment for each login, and proxies or VPNs that hide their true IP address. By using these methods, they can make it seem like dozens of different players are accessing your platform from various locations and devices. This tactic is specifically designed to defeat security systems that try to link accounts based on overlapping device fingerprints or IP addresses, allowing their network of fraudulent accounts to go undetected.
Create Synthetic and Disposable Profiles
Sometimes, fraudsters don’t even need a real person’s identity. Instead, they invent one. This involves creating synthetic identities by combining real and fabricated information, like a real, publicly-listed address with a made-up name and a disposable email. With this approach, people can create many accounts using different combinations of personal details to claim welcome bonuses and other promotions. These profiles are often used once and then abandoned, making them difficult to trace. Since the identity is not tied to a single, real person who might report the theft, these synthetic accounts can exist for longer without raising red flags, quietly siphoning away promotional funds.
The True Cost of Multi-Accounting Fraud
Multi-accounting might seem like a minor annoyance, but its impact goes far beyond a few unfair advantages. When fraudsters operate unchecked on your platform, they create a ripple effect of damage that can threaten your revenue, your legal standing, and the trust of your entire player community. These aren’t just abstract risks; they are tangible costs that can undermine the integrity and long-term health of your business. Understanding these costs is the first step toward building a more secure and resilient platform.
Drain Revenue Through Bonus Abuse
One of the most direct financial hits from multi-accounting comes from bonus and promotion abuse. Your marketing team works hard to design attractive sign-up offers and free bets to bring in new, legitimate players. Fraudsters see these promotions as a cash machine. They create dozens or even hundreds of accounts using different details to repeatedly claim welcome bonuses and other deals intended for genuine first-time users. Every dollar spent on a bonus for a fake account is a dollar taken directly from your marketing budget and bottom line, with zero return on investment. This systematic abuse drains resources that should be going toward acquiring and retaining real, valuable players.
Risk Fines and Compliance Penalties
The financial damage doesn’t stop at bonus abuse. Multi-accounting is often a precursor to more serious financial crimes, putting your platform at significant regulatory risk. Authorities are cracking down on platforms that fail to prevent illicit activities. Because fraudsters use multiple accounts to obscure their actions, they can use your platform as a tool for money laundering or other large-scale scams. If your platform is identified as a weak link in anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement, you could face steep fines, legal battles, and lasting damage to your company’s reputation. Regulators expect you to know who is on your platform, and turning a blind eye to multi-accounting is a risk you can’t afford.
Erode Player Trust and Platform Integrity
Perhaps the most corrosive cost of multi-accounting is the erosion of player trust. When legitimate users see that the games are rigged or that cheaters are running rampant, they lose faith in your platform’s fairness. This makes the entire experience feel unsafe and inequitable, causing honest players to leave for competitors they feel they can trust. In response, many platforms add heavy security measures that create friction for everyone, punishing good players for the actions of a few bad actors. This can slow down sign-ups and frustrate your best customers, creating a downward spiral where your platform becomes known more for its cheaters than for its community.
Spot the Red Flags of Multi-Accounting
Catching multi-accounting fraudsters can feel like a game of cat and mouse, but even the most careful cheaters leave clues behind. The secret is knowing which signals to watch for. A single suspicious action might just be a coincidence, but when you see several red flags popping up together, you’re likely looking at a coordinated fraud attempt. It’s about connecting the dots between technical data, like IP addresses, and behavioral patterns, like how a player bets.
Think of it as building a case. You start with one piece of evidence, then another, until a clear picture of deception emerges. Fraudsters rely on anonymity and scale, hoping their individual actions get lost in the noise of thousands of legitimate players. By implementing systems that can detect and link these subtle anomalies, you can disrupt their operations before they cause significant damage. This proactive approach not only protects your revenue but also preserves the integrity of your platform for the honest players who make up your community. The following are some of the most common red flags that can help you uncover multi-accounting schemes.
Identify Overlapping IPs and Devices
One of the most straightforward ways to spot multi-accounting is by tracking the digital fingerprints players leave behind. When multiple accounts are consistently accessed from the same IP address or device, it’s a major red flag. While some overlaps are innocent, like family members playing in the same household, fraudsters often operate dozens or even hundreds of accounts from a single location. Advanced digital footprinting can analyze a user’s technical data to build a profile and flag suspicious connections. Even when cheaters use VPNs or proxies to hide their IP, sophisticated device fingerprinting can often identify the specific computer or phone being used, linking seemingly separate accounts back to a single source.
Analyze Unusual Betting Patterns
How a person plays can be just as revealing as their technical data. Fraudsters are driven by profit, not passion for the game, and their behavior often reflects that. Look for accounts that engage in unusual or robotic betting patterns, such as always placing the maximum bet on promotional offers or making identical, synchronized wagers across multiple accounts. According to experts at Verisoul, you can use AI to analyze patterns in everything from mouse movements to betting frequency. These systems can spot subtle correlations that a human analyst would miss, distinguishing the calculated actions of a fraudster from the more organic behavior of a genuine player.
Find Linked Registrations and Transactions
Fraudsters often get lazy or make mistakes during the account creation process. They might use sequential usernames (player1, player2, player3) or slight variations of the same email address. They also frequently reuse payment methods, phone numbers, or even bonus codes across their network of fake accounts. These connections are goldmines for detection. For example, fraudsters often create many accounts to exploit affiliate marketing programs by generating fake clicks or sales to earn unearned commissions. By analyzing registration and transaction data, you can uncover these hidden networks. A tool that flags accounts sharing the same payment wallet or linked to the same bank can instantly reveal a fraud ring in action.
Strengthen Your Defenses with Identity Verification
Move Beyond Basic KYC and Document Checks
Traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols and document scans are a good starting point, but they are no longer enough to stop determined fraudsters. Cheaters have become experts at acquiring stolen identities or creating synthetic ones that can pass a simple document check. To truly protect your platform, you need to think beyond a one-and-done verification step at signup. A modern, comprehensive fraud prevention strategy is essential. This means layering in other signals, like checking a user’s device and location, analyzing their behavior for unusual patterns, and cross-referencing information to catch inconsistencies. By expanding your view of verification, you can start to build a much stronger defense against multi-accounting.
Add Biometrics and Liveness Detection
The next layer of your defense should involve confirming that the person creating or accessing an account is a real, live human being. This is where AI-powered biometrics and liveness detection come in. These technologies go a step further than just matching a face to a photo ID. A liveness check asks a user to perform a simple action, like turning their head, to prove they are physically present and not just using a static photo or a deepfake video. This multi-layered approach helps thwart fraudsters who try to use stolen credentials or spoofing techniques. By verifying the person behind the screen is real and present, you make it significantly harder for one person to create and manage an army of fake accounts.
Balance Security with a Smooth Player Experience
Implementing stronger security can’t come at the cost of the player experience. If your signup process is long and complicated, you risk frustrating and losing legitimate customers before they even place their first bet. The key is to find a healthy balance between robust security and a frictionless user journey. Players expect to sign up and start playing quickly, so any verification steps should feel seamless and intuitive. The best security solutions work quietly in the background, adding protection without adding hassle. This approach allows you to prevent multi-accounting effectively while ensuring genuine players have the smooth, easy experience they expect, which is crucial for long-term retention and platform trust.
Use Behavioral Analytics to Uncover Hidden Fraud
Static identity checks are a good starting point, but they can’t catch everything. Sophisticated fraudsters know how to get around basic KYC processes using fake or stolen documents. To truly protect your platform, you need to look beyond the initial sign-up and analyze what users are actually doing. This is where behavioral analytics comes in. By examining how players interact with your site or app in real time, you can uncover hidden patterns that signal coordinated fraud.
This approach shifts the focus from static data points to dynamic user actions. Instead of just asking, “Is this person who they say they are?” you also ask, “Is this person acting like a real, legitimate player?” This deeper layer of analysis is crucial for spotting bonus abuse, collusion, and other schemes that erode your revenue and damage player trust. It allows you to identify suspicious activity as it happens, not after the damage is done. By focusing on behavior, you can catch fraudsters who look legitimate on paper but whose actions tell a very different story.
Analyze Player Behavior and Device Patterns
Real-time behavioral fraud detection is your best defense for protecting legitimate players and staying compliant. It involves reading signals from actual session activity instead of waiting for a static rule to be broken. For example, you can spot bot-like pacing, where an account places bets at an unnaturally consistent speed, or identify players who are stacking bonuses across several linked accounts. These are red flags that traditional checks often miss.
Looking at these behaviors helps you find the subtle “gnoming” patterns behind chargeback fraud or bonus abuse, where fraudsters make many small, seemingly insignificant moves that add up to a major loss for your platform. By analyzing player activity during a session, you can catch cheaters in the act and protect the integrity of your games.
Apply Risk Scoring to Identify Fraud Rings
Once you start analyzing behavior, you can begin to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated accounts. This is where risk scoring becomes incredibly powerful. You can use AI to analyze patterns in how users interact with your platform, from their mouse movements and typing speed to their specific betting behaviors. A single odd action might be harmless, but a cluster of them across multiple accounts can reveal a coordinated fraud ring.
For instance, if several accounts are created from different locations but all exhibit the same unusual betting strategy, your system can flag them for review. This method helps you identify unusual patterns that indicate fraudulent activity at scale. By applying a risk score to each user based on their behavior, you can prioritize your security efforts and focus on the accounts that pose the greatest threat, making your fraud prevention far more efficient.
Let Machine Learning Find Patterns at Scale
Smart fraudsters don’t just use fake names; they use special tools to make their fake accounts look real. These include emulators that mimic different devices, virtual machines that create fake computer environments, and proxies that hide their true location. To combat this, you need equally sophisticated tools. Machine learning models are essential for finding and stopping this kind of advanced fraud at scale.
These systems can analyze millions of data points in real time, identifying complex patterns that are invisible to the human eye. A machine learning algorithm can learn what normal player behavior looks like and instantly flag deviations that suggest a fraudster is trying to disguise their activity. As fraudsters evolve their tactics, the model learns and adapts, ensuring your defenses stay one step ahead. This allows you to automate detection and secure your platform without slowing down the experience for your legitimate players.
Stop Fraud Without Adding Friction
Fighting fraud on your platform often feels like a balancing act. On one hand, you need strong security to stop bad actors. On the other, you don’t want to frustrate legitimate players with clunky verification processes that get in the way of the game. The good news is that you don’t have to choose between security and a great user experience.
Modern fraud prevention moves beyond disruptive checks and works quietly in the background. By focusing on passive verification, you can effectively identify and block fraudsters without adding friction for your real players. This approach not only secures your platform but also protects your most valuable asset: player trust and loyalty. It’s about creating a safe environment where genuine users can play with confidence, knowing you’re protecting them without treating them like suspects.
Why Low-Friction Checks Keep Players Happy
Think about it from a player’s perspective. They’ve come to your site to have fun, not to solve puzzles or fill out endless forms just to log in. Every extra step is a point of friction that can lead them to abandon your platform for a competitor’s. Low-friction checks make security invisible to the good guys. Real-time online gambling fraud prevention works behind the scenes to protect legitimate players from issues like bonus abuse and account takeovers. This approach minimizes disruptions for genuine users, letting them get straight to the action while your platform effectively flags suspicious activity in the background. It’s the key to keeping your players happy and engaged.
Confirm Real Humans Passively and at Scale
So, how do you verify users without interrupting them? The answer lies in passive behavioral analysis. Instead of asking a player to prove they’re human, you can observe their natural interactions with your platform. Technologies can analyze subtle signals like mouse movements, typing speed, and general navigation patterns to confirm a real person is behind the screen. This process happens instantly and invisibly. Utilizing AI to analyze these patterns is a powerful way of preventing multi-accounting fraud because it’s nearly impossible for bots or scripts to mimic the nuanced, sometimes imperfect, behavior of a real human. This method is also incredibly scalable, allowing you to verify thousands of users simultaneously without slowing anything down.
Protect Player Privacy While Securing Your Platform
Monitoring user behavior might sound invasive, but it doesn’t have to be. Modern solutions are designed with privacy at their core. This type of behavioral detection doesn’t need to access personal data or track what specific games someone is playing. Instead, it focuses on anonymous, high-level patterns. For example, it can identify bot-like pacing, impossibly fast actions, or coordinated activity across multiple accounts without ever needing to know who the user is. By leveraging signals from the session itself, you can identify fraudulent behavior without collecting sensitive information. This allows you to secure your platform and protect your community while fully respecting player privacy.
Build a Multi-Layered Defense Against Fraud
Relying on a single security checkpoint is like putting a simple lock on a bank vault. Determined fraudsters will find a way around it. A truly effective strategy for stopping multi-accounting involves building a multi-layered defense. Think of it as a series of tripwires and checkpoints that work together to protect your platform. Each layer is designed to catch different fraudulent techniques, from simple bonus abuse to sophisticated collusion rings. For example, while identity verification might stop a casual fraudster, it might not catch a coordinated ring using stolen credentials. That’s where behavioral analytics or device fingerprinting comes in.
This approach doesn’t just protect your revenue and keep you compliant; it creates a safer and fairer environment for your legitimate players. When honest users feel secure, they stick around longer and trust your platform more. The key is to implement these layers intelligently, so they stop bad actors without creating unnecessary friction for everyone else. By combining different technologies, you can create a robust security framework that identifies and neutralizes threats at every stage, from registration to gameplay and cash-out. A strong defense is one that is both powerful and invisible to the honest majority.
Link Accounts with Device Fingerprinting
One of the most effective ways to uncover multi-accounting is by looking at the devices players use. Even if a fraudster uses different names, emails, and payment methods, they often slip up and use the same computer or phone for multiple accounts. Device fingerprinting creates a unique digital signature for every user’s device and internet connection. This process, often called device and internet fingerprinting, checks unique details about a device to link multiple accounts to the same person. When your system detects that several accounts share the same fingerprint, it’s a massive red flag. This technique allows you to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated profiles and expose hidden fraud networks before they can coordinate their efforts.
Implement Real-Time Monitoring and Audits
Fraud prevention isn’t a one-and-done task you complete during onboarding. It’s an ongoing process that requires constant vigilance. Cheaters don’t stop trying to find loopholes after they’ve created an account, so your defenses can’t stop there either. Implementing real-time monitoring allows you to analyze player behavior as it happens, catching suspicious activity in the moment. This kind of real-time behavioral fraud detection helps operators protect legitimate players and stay compliant by spotting unusual betting patterns or other deviations from normal gameplay. For example, if a group of accounts suddenly starts betting in a coordinated way that suggests collusion, your system can flag them for review immediately. This proactive approach lets you intervene before significant financial or reputational damage occurs.
Stay Ahead of Evolving Fraud Tactics
Fraudsters are always looking for an edge, and they are quick to adopt new technologies to bypass security measures. A defense system that doesn’t evolve will eventually be broken. Today’s sophisticated cheaters use a variety of tools to make their fake accounts look real, from emulators that mimic different devices to proxies and VPNs that hide their true location. Your fraud prevention strategy must be dynamic enough to counter these advanced methods. This means using solutions that can identify the tell-tale signs of digital masking tools. By staying informed about the latest fraud trends and investing in technology that adapts to new threats, you can ensure your defenses remain effective. The goal is to create a security environment that is always one step ahead of those trying to exploit it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
My brother and I both play on the same platform from our house. Will we be flagged for multi-accounting? This is a great question and a common concern. Modern fraud detection systems are sophisticated enough to look for more than just a shared IP address. While multiple accounts from one location can be a signal, these systems primarily focus on behavioral patterns. They can distinguish between two family members enjoying the games independently and a single person operating multiple accounts in a coordinated, suspicious way. The goal is to spot fraudulent behavior, like simultaneous bonus claims or collusive betting, not to penalize legitimate players who happen to share a home.
We already use KYC document checks. Isn’t that enough to stop multi-accounting? While Know Your Customer (KYC) checks are an essential first step, they are no longer a complete solution on their own. Fraudsters have become very skilled at obtaining high-quality fake or stolen identity documents that can pass a basic scan. This is why a multi-layered approach is so important. A fraudster might pass the initial document check, but they can still be caught by other layers, such as behavioral analytics that spot non-human activity or device fingerprinting that links their supposedly separate accounts back to a single source.
If I add more security, won’t I just frustrate my legitimate players? This is the classic security dilemma, but you don’t have to choose between safety and a great player experience. The best modern security solutions work quietly in the background without adding friction for your users. Instead of forcing players through extra hoops, these systems passively analyze behavioral signals, like mouse movements and typing patterns, to confirm a real human is present. This allows genuine players to sign up and play without interruption, while bots and fraudsters are identified and blocked behind the scenes.
This all seems complex. What is the most important first step I can take to fight multi-accounting? The most impactful first step is to shift your focus from static verification to dynamic analysis. Start by implementing a system that monitors player behavior in real time. This allows you to see how users are actually interacting with your platform, which is where fraudsters reveal themselves. By analyzing gameplay patterns, transaction speeds, and other session activities, you can catch suspicious behavior as it happens. This single layer of defense can uncover everything from bonus abuse to collusion rings that traditional checks would miss.
How does behavioral analysis work without violating our players’ privacy? Privacy is a critical part of building trust, and modern behavioral systems are designed with this in mind. This technology does not need to track personal data or monitor what specific games a person plays. Instead, it focuses on anonymous, high-level patterns of interaction. For example, it analyzes the rhythm of a person’s typing or the way they move a mouse to confirm they are human, not a script. It looks for the subtle, natural inconsistencies of human behavior, allowing you to verify a user’s presence without ever collecting sensitive personal information.