Gambling has always been big business. If you look back at the history of Las Vegas (or even just watch Casino, the 1995 Martin Scorsese classic), it’s apparent that this big business drew in organized crime. The days of the mafia running the casinos in hot spots like Las Vegas and Atlantic City is long past and the casino industry is much tamer than it used to be.
Online casinos are now a major segment of the gambling industry. While there are many legitimate, safe and secure online casinos, there are also some rather nefarious ones. The nature of the internet makes it easy for unscrupulous companies and individuals to hide their location and act with impunity.
This doesn’t mean that you should stop playing at online casinos – it just means that you need to be careful about where you choose to play. Choosing a safe and reputable online casino platform can take some time but it is well worth the peace of mind it gives you.
In this article, we’ll go over our top tips for choosing a safe and reputable online casino so that you can focus on the fun.
Read reviews
We read reviews of products before we buy them, and of movies before we watch them. Yelp and Tripadvisor are massive platforms because we rely on reviews to choose where we eat and where we stay. Why wouldn’t we read reviews of online casinos before we play?
If you simply search for the name of the casino you’re considering and add the word ‘review’, a number of established online casino review sites will come up. Read two or three so that you can compare how they assess the casino in question, and you’ll have a great idea about how trustworthy it is.
Take this review of GGBet online casino as an example. It covers all of the basic information about the brand, which games are available and how to claim any bonus offers. Then it tells you about the casino’s license and what kind of encryption software they’re using. This detailed information reassures you about the legitimacy of the casino and gives you some insight into what it’s like before you create an account.
Check the license
Every reputable online casino will make it easy for a user to find their licensing information. In order to operate legally, an online casino needs to be licensed by the body overseeing gambling in that region.
Online casinos operating in the United Kingdom, for example, need to be licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. To operate in Canada, the situation is slightly more complex. Online casinos need the appropriate license from any of the provinces in which they will be operating. For example, in Ontario, this would be the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.
Verify the security precautions
When shopping online, we’ve become used to checking for the little lock icon next to the URL. This shows us that it has a valid security certificate and can be trusted. When choosing an online casino, you should go one step farther to verify their security.
The gold standard for keeping data safe is 128-bit encryption. If a site uses 128-bit encryption, you know that your financial data is safe from hackers. A scam casino is unlikely to go to the trouble of implementing this software.
Look at the payment methods
If the only payment methods that are offered are ones you don’t recognize, that’s a bad sign. Safe and secure online casinos will offer you a range of payment options, including bank or wire transfer, debit/credit cards and payment apps. These kinds of payment methods have consumer protections in place, which is why untrustworthy businesses will typically avoid working with them.
Consider customer support
No matter what industry you’re in, customer support is essential. Being able to contact customer support is one of the easiest ways to tell if an online casino is legitimate. A sketchy casino will make it very difficult to contact anyone. They may only have a phone number or an email but neither will be monitored 24/7.
What you should look for is at least two ways to contact customer support, and a wide enough window when they’re accessible. It doesn’t need to be 24/7, but at the very least it needs to be normal business hours. There are three typical ways to reach customer support – by phone, by email and by live chat. Having at least two methods basically guarantees that you’ll be able to reach someone.
