Staying safe at online casinos isn’t just about creating a strong password that is difficult for a hacker to guess. It’s also about choosing a trustworthy site that won’t let you down, managing your bankroll, gambling responsibly each time you sign in to your account to play your favourite games, and so much more.
With that said, here is a useful guide to staying safe on any online casino website that you decide to join.
Top tips for staying safe at online casinos
There are many things you can do to better protect yourself that will ensure you have a safe and enjoyable time each time you log in to your chosen casino sites to play your favourite games.
Here are a few useful tips to remember to help you stay safe when playing at online casinos:
- Before you sign up to a new online casino, check what the experts have to say. In other words, read the insightful, honest, unbiased, and accurate reviews on globally renowned iGaming review sites like https://www.johnslots.com/en/casino/new-casinos/. Their dedicated team of writers and researchers have done all the hard work by finding, reviewing and rating today’s safest casino sites, and their in-depth reviews will instantly tell you whether the casino you are considering joining is safe or not. If, for example, you live in the United Kingdom, stick to playing on sites licensed by the UKGC (UK Gambling Commission), because they will be controlled by reputable operators.
- When you register your new online casino account, you will sometimes be assigned a username; other times, your registered email address will be your username. When it comes to creating a new account password, make sure it’s at least 10-12 characters long and includes a mixture of letters, numbers, and characters symbols. Also, never save your login credentials, especially on a shared device, which will prevent unauthorised access to your account.
- For deposits and withdrawals, only use well-established payment gateways and avoid using a service that nobody has ever heard of.
- The moment you’ve signed up to a fully licensed and regulated (ie legally permitted) online casino, head straight to the ‘responsible gambling’ or ‘safer gambling tools’ section to manually set a range of bankroll management controls, such as deposit limits, to ensure you never overspend, which will keep things safe and fun.
If you can remember some of these fundamental safety tips the next time you go online to play casino games in real-money mode, you should have nothing to worry about regarding your safety.
How else can I stay safe online when playing on casino sites?
As well as reading the expert reviews, which pretty much tell you everything you need to know about an online casino you are considering registering a new account with, you can also conduct your own basic research, background checks, and due diligence just to be sure the site is safe.
For example, check that the URL in the domain bar starts with https:// and not just http://. The ‘s’ basically means that the site is secure.
Also, avoid playing on unlicensed and unregulated casino sites at all costs, because they can’t be trusted. Find out who the local licensing authority/gaming commission is in your country, and confirm that the site you’re about to join holds a license from that authority.
Today’s safest sites are also usually monitored by at least one internationally accredited non-profit online casino testing agency, such as eCOGRA, which safeguards players by scrutinising iGaming operators’ day-to-day operations and funding, testing their games for fairness and so on.
A trusted site should also have an active firewall and use 128-bit or higher Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) cryptographic encryption measures and Transport Layer Security (TLS) tech, among other cybersecurity measures, to keep your account details safe at all times.
How responsible gambling tools keep you safe
Most players who join online casinos find it easy to remain well within their initial spending budgets without having to use safer gambling tools. However, without setting them, some players can easily overspend.
Therefore, just to be on the safe side, each time you sign up to a new online casino, go straight to the responsible/safer gambling section so you can manually set things like deposit limits or session time reminders.
You should also start by devising a reasonable spending budget, using only disposable income that you can afford to lose after you have paid all your bills etc. Some players find that setting a daily, weekly or monthly deposit limit is the best way to stay in control of their spending, whereas others find that setting a session time reminder, win/loss limit or spending caps works better.
These tools have significantly helped prevent problem gambling and are the first line of defence against chasing your losses, which the experts recommend never doing. Instead of trying to recoup what you just lost, simply log out of your account and try again another day when you’re in a more positive frame of mind.
Also, never log in to your favourite casino sites to bet real money while tired or intoxicated. Playing while in an altered state of mind could prove costly – you might be more inclined to take bigger risks than you normally would. Finally, never treat playing at online casinos as a job, only as a relaxing way to pass the time playing the games you love.
Conclusion
Besides setting as many safer gambling tools as you think will help, the best way to mitigate risk is to understand the rules and odds of the games you play, the implied probability rates for each outcome and the average return to player payout rates.
Some of these same rules can also be applied to sports betting when wagering on major professional sporting events like the UEFA Nations League or FIFA World Cup finals, for example.
Understanding the expected RTP payout percentage rates, and whether the online casino games you are considering playing have low, medium or high volatility rates, can help you decide which games to play and which to avoid.
Finally, remember to stick to playing on world-class sites with overwhelmingly positive reviews and high-ranking positions and ratings, and never play games in real-money mode out of sheer necessity.
Being a responsible gambler on a fully licensed and regulated site will extend your average session time and should help you hold on to your bankroll for longer periods.
