How to make sure you’re using a trustworthy online casino
Online casinos are a fast-growing industry around the world. Even in countries that haven’t fully legalized them yet, online casinos that are operated by offshore companies with international licenses allow people from all around the world to play.
New industries, especially tech or digital ones, are very hard for governments to regulate. The law is always a few steps behind what is actually happening in the digital world. Fewer regulations or ones that are out of touch with reality can also mean fewer protections for those who are taken advantage of.
With their rapid growth and huge market share, online casinos are a very lucrative business. While this has attracted a lot of entrepreneurs, it has also caught the attention of scammers. Scammers see that they can make a lot of money by exploiting customers and they take advantage of the situation. This article will look at just what makes an online casino a scam and give some tips on how to find a trustworthy option.
Signs an online casino is a scam
On the surface, most scam online casinos look completely legitimate. They have similar interfaces to normal online casinos and offer many of the same slot machine games and table games. There are some things to keep an eye out for that are usually a good indicator that something’s fishy.
Scam casinos will try to reel you in with bonuses and promotions that are too good to be true. The other main indicator that something isn’t right is that it will be very difficult to find information on the site. Unlike a regular online casino, there will be no information on the casino’s licensing and no customer support number or email.
The most common way that scam casinos take advantage of users is by making it impossible to withdraw any winnings. This will be done by either having very vague but complex terms and conditions that make it impossible to withdraw from an account or they will simply have “technical issues” that are never resolved.
A lot of it boils down to trusting your instincts — if something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. If you’re still unsure about where to start playing, these tips will point you towards a trustworthy online casino:
It has ties to a land-based casino
There are plenty of online casinos that are trustworthy that do not have a land-based counterpart. However, having a connection to a land-based casino is an easy indicator that an online casino is trustworthy. As the gambling industry has become more corporate, many of the land-based casinos are operated by multinational companies and are strong, stable brands.
Among the Pennsylvania legal casinos, the Rivers family of casinos have a great online counterpart. Rivers has two physical locations, one in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh. They launched an online casino that includes a sportsbook where players can bet on everything from local college sports to international games like theFIFA World Cup.
Other land-based casino brands that have branched out into the digital world include MGM, Caesars and Wynn. These are three of the biggest and most recognizable casino brands in the world, so users can feel secure when playing at one of their online casinos.
Check the licensing
There are several countries that license most of the online casinos in the world. The most reputable licensing bodies, like the United Kingdom and Malta, havehigh standards and strict regulations that require companies to be transparent about their finances and to have protections in place for customers.
These licenses are generally expensive, so when you see that an online casino has been licensed by one of these countries, it means that have invested heavily in the business. This is good evidence that they are legitimate.
Read the reviews
Reading online reviews before choosing a restaurant or hiring an electrician has become the norm. Yelp and websites like it have become an essential step in our decision-making process. Sometimes we forget that we can use review sites to judge online businesses as well as brick-and-mortar ones.
There are also specialized online casino review sites. It’s worthwhile to check a handful of different review sites since sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether or not a review has been sponsored or whether it is based on personal experience.
The more aware you are and the more research you do on an online casino, the more likely it is that you will find a trustworthy one and be able to gamble with peace of mind.