At some point, you’ve probably heard about the experience of someone who got ripped off at an online casino. Well, this is the case when a player visits a shady online casino.
Besides risking stolen funds, players are also at risk of having other important details, like their credit card information, stolen.
With such danger attached to betting on shady online casinos, you would think that many bettors would avoid it, right? Well, many players would have loved to avoid them, but these shady casinos are not so easy to spot.
Does this mean that punters are at the mercy of such platforms online? No, there are many ingenious ways that a player can use to avoid these casinos and choose the right ones. In this article, we’ll be walking you through a few of them.
6 Ways to Avoid Shady Anonymous Casinos
All shady online casinos have a few similarities, which makes it easy to tell them apart from the genuine article. Below are some of the techniques that you can use to avoid such casinos.
Examine Their Online Reputation
No good wagering site is an overnight success. They must have acquired their fandom and popularity over years of good service and excellent gaming experiences. So, there’s bound to be some information about these websites online, along with user reviews.
If a Google search doesn’t bring up any user reviews, you can check the social media handle of that platform. On their social media handles, you’ll be able to see queries, reviews, or even complaints from customers.
As long as that online casino has been doing a good job, players will leave many good reviews about them. While bad reviews are inevitable, the majority of all customer reviews should be good.
So, if you’ve decided to visit an online casino, you should ensure that it has a positive online reputation. A bad online reputation is a hallmark of a shady casino.
Check the Casino’s Licence
Most casinos display their gambling licences at the bottom of their home page. If you don’t find it there, you’ll probably see it on their “Terms and Conditions” page. Some of the licences that you might see are from popular authorities, such as:
- United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC)
- Malta Gaming Authority (MGA)
- Kahnawake Gaming Commission
These gambling authorities are entities that have checked the casino and approved it after seeing that it meets their standards. This means that the casino offers honest games, fair odds, a secure platform, and other noteworthy features.
So, a good casino would always have a licence, while a shady one would not have any. If you visit a betting platform and you don’t see a betting licence proudly displayed, then it’s probably a shady site.
Contact Customer Care
No reliable wagering website would like to have its customers complain about poor customer support. As such, they all offer a variety of customer support options, such as live chat, telephones, and emails. Most sites also offer 24/7 customer support to show that they’re available around the clock.
So, if you’re visiting a new gambling platform, the first thing you should do is contact customer support. A reliable online casino should reply to you within 48 hours, and if you contact them via live chat, within the hour. Any more than this and you’re probably dealing with scammers.
Unbelievable Bonuses
We all hunger for the best bonuses whenever we visit an online casino, and it’s understandable. So, every online casino is in a war to outdo their competition and provide better bonuses to customers.
However, some bonuses are outside the realm of normalcy. A casino is an establishment that’s in the market to make money. So, offering bonuses that benefit customers all the time would quickly put them out of business.
So, their bonuses are structured in a way that all their players earn a bit. If the payouts for the bonus are high, only select bettors would get access to that bonus. That’s why a 100-free spins bonus at an online casino comes with various terms and conditions that restrict it.
If you see juicy bonuses at an online casino without any restrictions on them, then you should be worried. That’s because the gambling platform has no plans to pay the player, so they can offer unbelievable terms.
Payment Discrepancies
Aside from punters who visit an online casino to have fun, most players look forward to the day when they can withdraw their winnings. That’s why online casinos always try their best to offer speedy payment options to their players. This is why many sites are embracing blockchain technology, because of the speed that it brings to payment transactions.
So, a website that delays payments or runs into numerous payment issues is likely to be run by scammers. Some of these unscrupulous sites might tell their customers that they’ve run out of funds. Others might force players to play compulsory jackpot games before they’re allowed to withdraw their winnings.
In some cases, you’ll also find reviews about these sites on social media, where customers are lamenting about unresolved payment issues. While a few payment issues can be accepted, having many customers complain about them is something to worry about. To be on the safe side, it’s best to avoid such betting platforms.
Avoid Unsecured Gambling Sites
Whenever you visit popular websites like Facebook, Youtube, eBay, and the like, you’ll see a “lock” in the address bar. If you don’t see a lock, you’ll see “HTTPS”, before the address of that website. All these go to show that the site is secured with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol.
Shady sites are unlikely to have a “lock” in their address. When you check, you’ll probably see “HTTP,” without the “S.” This shows that the site is not secured, and it’s best to avoid such sites.
Conclusion
Regardless of how secure the internet gets, there’ll always be unscrupulous websites and individuals looking to defraud others. As a result, it is up to internet users and punters to learn how to avoid them.
This article covers some of the techniques that a punter can employ. Individuals that use these techniques will have a high chance of playing at genuine online casinos.
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