Online Gambling Today
There has been an unprecedented proliferation of online gambling sites in the past decade. These websites offer pretty much the same gambling options, but not all gambling sites are bona fide. A substantial number of online casino platforms are nothing less but phishing websites. If you happen to visit malicious gambling websites, you incur the risk of infection from viruses, trojans, worms and other equally harmful malware. This is why you must exercise caution when choosing an online gambling platform.
Being able to distinguish between safe online gambling platforms from dubious sites is a daunting task for most people. The difficulty arises from the fact that dubious gambling websites go to a lot of trouble to look legit. Why? By creating a website that appears to be credible, the owners of shady sites hope to achieve three things:
- They want to enforce your desire to trust their website
- They want you to feel free to share personal data
- They want you to make a financial commitment
Unless you are genuinely keen, you might end up spending a considerable portion of your hard-earned money on a dubious gambling site. However, there are of ways accessing the validity of a website. The various approaches are discussed below. It is the goal of this article to increase your competence in identifying gambling sites that you can trust.
Qualities of a Legit Online Gambling Website
There are mostly two stages of accessing the trustworthiness of an online gambling platform. The first stage is essentially a surface inspection of the various attributes on the gambling website. You can use the checklist below to make a first-glance assessment of a gambling website.
Web Design
The appearance of the landing of an online gambling site can be all you need to assess whether the website is trustworthy or not. A reliable gambling platform will exhibit essential attributes of good website design. These attributes are a simple layout, compatibility and easy navigation.
Layout refers to the placement of the different sections making up a webpage. A valid gambling site should have a well-defined but straightforward design. What this means is that the landing page should only have the essentials. This will include a few tabs at the top, brief descriptions of two or three products and links to key pages at the bottom.
If you happen to encounter a bloated landing page, then leave immediately. Furthermore, page loading problems on your phone’s browser would imply a compatibility problem. In either case, it is best to leave the online gambling platform and look for a better one.
Contact Information
It should be easy for you to navigate your way to the contacts page of a genuine gambling site. Some sites provide this information at the bottom of the landing page. Most online gambling sites, however, offer the link to the contact page at the top. The link to contacts usually has a place in a drop-down list. The contact page should have a physical address, an email address and a customer service number.
You should be able to make immediate use of the contact information provided. The most effective way of confirming the validity of a gambling site is to call the customer service number. If no one answers your call, then you have sufficient grounds to steer away from that particular gambling website.
Spelling and Grammar
Bonafide websites spend considerable monetary and human resource on ensuring that specific webpage content is relevant and devoid of error. This feat is achieved through the use of various SEO creation and analytical tools. These tools aim to boost the readability and engagement of text towards site visitors.
The landing pages of valid gambling site tend to be rather simple and straightforward, with little text content. This outcome makes it easier for you to detect any textual anomalies that might be present. Illegible text on the page, misspelled words and grammatical errors are significant warning signs that you should not ignore. These kinds of mistakes are common on illegitimate sites.
Links
Clicking on a link with nothing happening is enough reason for you to exit an online gambling platform. Why? A dead-link is a sign of the laxity in maintaining a website’s links as would be the case with a hoax site. A link on an illegitimate gambling website will direct you to dubious sites including shopping sites, blogging sites, porn-sites and a myriad other types phishing sites.
You can, therefore, check the legitimacy of a site by clicking at four or five links on the landing page at random. If any of the links on a gambling site turns out to be unresponsive or such links redirect you to an apparent dubious site, then you consider the gambling platform as untrustworthy.
Physical Company Address
A legal online gambling business is more than just a website. Many land-based gambling establishments have availed their services and products on several online platforms. Furthermore, online gambling platforms are required to have an online gambling license in at least one country. The implication is that an online gambling site must have a physical address for the gambling platform to be considered legit.
You can use this salient fact to verify that a gambling website is genuine by checking whether the site has a physical address. All you have to do is type the gambling site’s URL into Google and click search. The search engine results should have a list of links that can grant you access to this information. If the gambling site happens to have a Wikipedia page, then rest assured that the gambling platform is the real deal.
Regulatory Bodies for Online Gambling Platforms
Better Business Bureau
The Better Business Bureau is an online platform whose central goal is to provide consumers with unbiased information about a business. The consumer-centric body also provides a platform upon which to raise complaints relating to corrupt business practices. The organization also provides news on recently enacted government regulations affecting different business sectors in the US. The BBB can also grant you access to bona fide customer reviews. Online businesses that align with BBB business standards have the BBB seal visible on their websites.
You can, therefore, use the BBB platform to check out the legitimacy of a gambling website. In two simple steps, you can gain access to all the information you need. Just go to the Better Business Bureau site at bbb.org. Once on the landing page, type-in the gambling site’s URL into the search bar of the BBB search engine. Any information regarding that online business should be immediately available for a trustworthy online gambling platform.
SSL Certification
The acronym SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and refers to a data encryption protocol for online data transmission. An online gambling site has to have an SSL certificate due to the sensitive nature of betting transactions. The encryption safeguards any data transmitted to and from the servers hosting the gambling platform. Such information included passwords and usernames, credit card numbers and any other personal data. Web hosting companies usually provide SSL certification.
The way to check whether an online gambling platform has SSL certification is quite simple. This is because the vast majority of mainstream internet browsers automatically verify SSL certification on any site you visit. You can manually check the SSL certification of an online gambling site by looking at the beginning of the site’s URL.
It the sites URL is preceded by ‘https’ then you can rest assured that the gambling website is secure. This is because the URL prefix HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. Thus all data transmission to and from the gambling site is safe from illegal use. However, if the URL prefix is ‘http’ only, then make haste to exit the online gambling site.
Governmental Gambling Regulators
The Gaming Control Board regulates all Gambling in the United States. The board has affiliates in each state that are tasked with gambling regulation within the state. Gambling laws in the US require all online gambling platforms to have a valid gambling license for them to operate within the state.
You can check whether an online gambling platform has a license to operate in your state in a few easy steps. Go to the webpage of the local gambling regulatory authority. If you don’t know their URL, you can Google it. Once on the landing page, type the gambling website URL onto the sites search engine. You will be immediately notified if the online gambling platform is licensed in your state.
Conclusion
It should not be difficult to establish whether a gambling site is legit or not. It might be necessary to do a bit of research about the gambling site, but in most events, attention-to-detail will suffice.
