Safe Online Casino 2016 - How to Pick a Trusted Casino Site
If you’re not too familiar with online gambling, you might think that it’s just a small, niche hobby that just a few hundred people play worldwide, similar to, say, the people who collect coins or postage stamps or whatever. After all, if people want to gamble, they can just go to a real casino, right? Nobody wants to stay at home and just play pretend-roulette all day! Well, I’m sorry to say, but if you think that, you’re completely wrong. Online gambling, in all of its forms (casino, bingo, betting…) is one of the biggest European markets we’ve ever seen, with some countries, such as the UK, Germany and Denmark, considering it a HUGE part of their economies! If you live in one of those countries, chances are you definitely know at least one person who regularly engages in online slots or betting on football matches on the Internet, even if you’re not aware of it – the statistics prove it. But, just like with any venture, the bigger the market, the bigger the risk of getting scammed. As online gambling became more and more lucrative (not to mention downright illegal in certain countries), it has also attracted a certain number of imposters who seek to deceive gamblers into parting with their hard-earned money. So, how do you keep yourself safe? Sites such as www.safecasinos.org.uk are a good start, but you need to know the basics of online safety by yourself before you dive in.
What Happens If I Gamble At An Unsafe Online Casino?
That’s a statement I often hear thrown around – “Some casinos are just unlicensed because they don’t want to give the government money, but they’re actually not fake at all!” Which is a straight up myth, likely perpetuated by those very same unlicensed casinos. As you know, in most countries where gambling is legal, online casinos are required to receive a license from the government, or an independent agency that’s employed by the government. This license essentially proves that A) all of the games in the casino are completely fair and none have been rigged to just take the player’s money 100% of the time; and B) that in the case of a player’s win, the casino is obligated by law to pay out every single penny, or else face a massive lawsuit. There’s also a C, which revolves around the casino having to pay taxes to the government in order to keep their license, but we don’t really care about that. While some countries (such as Liechtenstein) don’t require licenses, the overwhelming majority do.
So, what happens if you choose to gamble at an unlicensed (in other words, illegal) casino? You might assume that in an unlicensed casino all of the games are rigged to not pay out anything, but that’s actually not the case. In fact, it’s likely that in illegal casinos games might pay out MORE than they would in a licensed, legal one, to stimulate players to deposit even more of their real world cash. Imagine putting in a 20 and knowing you had a surefire way of leaving with 300! But of course, when it’s finally time for you to withdraw that cash, customer support will conveniently experience some “technical difficulties” accessing your bank account, and you’ll never see a cent. Sorry about that! The absolute worst case scenario is that you might actually get arrested and prosecuted for your involvement in an illegal casino, which probably wouldn’t happen to you, but it has actually happened several times before, so it’s better to just not take that chance. Either way, at the very least you’ll just be wasting your money.
So, How Do I Protect Myself From That?
It’s simple – just go find a licensed casino! Trust me, it’s a whole lot easier than it sounds, since literally all you need to do is look up who is giving out the licenses in your country and then make sure that the casinos you play at are licensed! Now, I can’t really tell you how to do this in every country because, well, there’s dozens upon dozens of different licensing bodies depending on where you live, so why don’t we take the UK, for example? In the UK, casinos need to be licensed by the Gambling Commission in order to be considered legitimate. Most (if not all) casinos which are licensed will have a link to their issued certificate somewhere in their footer, which you can click and examine. If that link is there, and the certificate checks out, you’re good to go! “Ah, but maybe they made up a fake certificate!” You might be saying, and if that’s the case, I admire how thorough you’re being – you can never be too careful when money’s involved! But for some extra security, you can always just go to the Gambling Commission website and look up the certificate number or the casino name to see if it exists in their database. If it doesn’t, then maybe that certificate is fake after all, but if it does, it’s all good.
Once you know how to look up a license, it literally takes less than a minute to make sure that you’re being safe. Sure, some might regard this as a hassle that’s not worth it at the end, especially when looking through dozens of online casinos and trying to pick out the best, but trust me, you should prioritize your safety above anything. Because at the end of the day, if you’re faced with a choice between playing at a fraudulent casino that will likely cheat you out of your money or not playing at all, it’s better to abstain from gambling altogether. So the best course of action is to just not find yourself in this situation at all and find yourself a good, safe online casino, no matter what.
