Are online casinos safe?

Security and safety are always big issues more so where money is involved. And when it comes to anything online, there is always the fear that you might not only lose all the money you have deposited but some hacker might even succeed in stealing your credit or debit card information and run up a list of purchases as long as your arm before you discover something is amiss.

Online casinos are well aware of the risks involved and the major companies spend as much money on securing their online version as they do in security of their regular brick-and-mortar establishments. A single incident of theft could ruin the entire online gambling industry that has of late been growing exponentially. Let us take a look at various security aspects of online casinos.

Quality site versus bogus casinos

We see hundreds if not thousands of casinos. We will limit the term online casinos as to those sites that are dedicated to casino-based games like blackjack, poker, slots and a lot more. These casinos have been sprouting up since the late 90s. We see a lot of gimmicky sites and unknown names and establishments. In the initial stages there was very little supervision and virtually no rules or laws governing online gambling. Rogue casino sites sprouted online and many players burnt their fingers. Worse, players did not like to admit they lost money while gambling online. This in turn kept fraudulent deals under the wraps. Of course all online casinos setup in the 90’s were not cheats. The ones that already had a brick-and-mortar presence had a reputation to protect and so played safe and fair. It is the new online casino sites with no previous casino experience or expertise that had poor security implementation. Today the scenario has changed still, if you are a newbie, it would be best to play safe and register at established casinos with good reputation and unblemished safety record.

Banking
When it comes to banking, there are 2 aspects you need to look into. You need to see if the casino is licensed at known jurisdictions. The site should also be transparent with their security measures. You will find that all of them are using the secure servers and a 128-bit encryption technology. This means that the data you enter is less susceptible to being intercepted by a hacker. At least the data from the online server will (probably) not be stolen. The same cannot be said if you have spyware or your own computer was hacked via your local internet connection. So when it comes to security there are two aspects to it – security at the server end (i.e. the online casino) and security at your end. If you are not careful with your computer usage, flying to Las Vegas might prove a better option. Apart from that, you can rely on online casinos that have secure banking or are licensed by or affiliated to third party gaming associations like eCOGRA.

Gaming software
Only a handful of names are really reliable and trusted when it comes to gaming software. These names were established in the late 90s to the first half of the 2000s. It is a concern for many what the software is since this is the mechanism that makes gaming possible and the random number generators need to be configured for fair and safe gaming. Known gaming software companies follow strict guidelines and are less likely to commit fraud. They are also very selective about which sites they sell their software to. It would be best to register with online casinos with software from established gaming software providers.

Customer service
You need to feel safe playing online and dealing with customer service as well. If the customer service is dedicated to the needs of the players, they will reply fast and they will also be courteous and respectful. In any case never provide any sensitive information to the customer service – any information they need is already available with them through their software system and accessible by authorized personnel.

Legalities and information use
Casinos have privacy policy pages on their sites. This privacy policy serves as a guideline and agreement as to how the site will record information, save information and use information. You need to be aware of how the online casino makes use of your personal and non personal information. Personal information includes name, address and contact details. The non personal are those used for tracking and checking site usage. Non personal information is usually used to improve the players gaming experience. The sites will have different ways of writing their privacy policies but basically, it will talk about how they acquire such information, third party cookies, clicking on links and ads, protection of data and other details. You should read the privacy policy regularly because the online casino site may or may not notify you of any changes to the privacy policy.

Personal safety
Most online casinos today have a high level of data encryption and also use secure servers. On your part too, it is equally necessary to have firewalls and proper anti-virus software installed. If you are using a Wifi internet connection, it is necessary that it is a secure connection so that someone in your neighborhood cannot tap into your internet connection. Although not necessary, some players also go to the extent of deleting all cookies and temporary files after every logout from the casino server.

We agree the internet can be an unsafe wild place – rather like the ocean. But it does not stop us from taking a cruise. So also with the proper safety tools in place, the internet can be as safe as any place you like it to be. There are dangers everywhere but that does not mean we should not venture out. The online industry is becoming very big and it is also increasing in popularity.

Without doubt hackers will try to find a way to access online casinos – same as thieves will try to steal from a brick-and-mortar establishment. So given that there is danger both offline and online, there is no need for casino players to get paranoid about online security. Keep your eyes open, do you research and you should be safe.