When it comes to gambling online, the first question in people’s minds is (or it should be): “Is it safe to play online casinos?”. With the massive amounts of frauds today, not in the gambling industry, but on the Internet in general, everyone must ask themselves that exact same question every time they conduct any financial transactions or exchange private information on the web, period.
To be perfectly honest, however, asking is it safe to play online casino, is a lot like asking is it safe to cross a street. Sure, it could be safe, many of us have done it for decades without accidents, but you have to take some basic precautions, like looking both ways, rather than just rushing in head first, blinders on. It’s the same with online gambling and the casinos on the Internet – it could be as safe as it comes, millions of people play real money casino games daily, without any safety or security issues.
And just as any approach to general safety should be multi-faucet, there are different aspects of what people consider being safe to play online casino, especially the real money online casino. Therefore, in this guide we will attempt to cover as many of them as possible. If you have a specific concern, simply scroll through to see the solution; and if that particular security concern has not been addressed – send us an email to let us know, and we’ll do our best to answer.
Is it safe to play online casino?
Broadly speaking, yes, it is safe to play online casinos. But one must make sure they have chosen the right casino. You can look at a reputable internet casino much in the same way you would look at a Native American land-based casino. Since Native American casinos don’t fall under state jurisdiction, they are not regulated by the local gaming commissions, the honesty and integrity of the games are not being verified, etc. Yet, people don’t feel unsafe gambling there, they know their winnings will be paid, and while some may question the payouts of the casino games at certain casinos, overall they are safe and secure places to have some fun and unwind.
The exact same approach should be taken with the good online casinos, those with literally decades of proven honesty and integrity. They are indeed safe to play, they won’t sell your personal information to email spammers, your winnings will be paid, the games are not rigged, and so on. Sadly, the list of such casinos is not very extensive, which is why you would only find a handful of online casinos like that on our website – we simply don’t recommend any internet casinos without a long track record of integrity.
So in a nutshell – it is safe to play online casino for real money, but only if you don’t blindly jump at the first casino you see on the internet, or the first big casino bonus offer you come across. Take the time to do your on research (which would require many hours spent sifting through chaff to find the few grains of wheat), or take the correct shortcut and use review websites like ours. We have thousands of return readers weekly, for the simple fact that we don’t recommend junk, we don’t even bother with it. Sure, this results in a smaller selection for our visitors, but it pays out in ranking only the safest and most secure casino gambling websites.
How to find a safe real money online casino?
Another frequently asked question is how do you find those safe online casinos that offer real money games. If you read the previous question, you already enjoyed our humble brag, but it’s the truth. The fastest way to find a safe casino is to choose any one from our approved list, either on our home page, where we list all of the casino websites worthy of playing, or from one of our more specific guides, where we rank the casinos based on distinct or specialized factors. Either way, you can see that our overall best casino list doesn’t contain even a couple of dozen gambling websites, where some of the “review” websites could list upwards of 200 different casinos. Let’s just say that is there were that many safe online casinos, you wouldn’t be searching for one.
But self-promotion aside, anyone can do their own research and find which casino are safe to play. If you choose this route, make sure to set aside ample time for the job. If you just skim it or rush it – you might as well not do it at all, and trust your luck that the casino you pick to play is a safe one. And yes, some people do just that, which is what keeps giving the rogue gambling websites plenty of incentives to continue with their cheating ways.
When doing your own research, clear up at least a few solid hours of research per casino. Rummage through review websites, blogs, forum threads, going as far back as at least a few years. Familiarize yourself with the intricacies of offshore gambling, payment methods, cryptography. Learn how to “spot the differences” – a lot of bad casinos will simply close shop today and reopen under a new name tomorrow. The list of things to look for will go on and on. You can also use the safety questions in this guide as a template for your research and find out the answers for each individual online casino you are considering. In any case, we wish you luck, since you will need some of it, at least initially.
Note, from this point on, all the answers to the questions below will have the assumption that you are considering one of the safe casinos we have reviewed on our website. The answers are to questions about casino safety overall, once you have opened an account with an honest online casino. You should not assume that they apply to any casino on the Internet.
Is it safe to deposit real money?
It is absolutely safe to fund your player account with real money at the online casino! For example, credit card transactions are always done through a secure connection. It used to be SSL, but now TLS is the king of that type of secure connection. All safety-minded online casinos also naturally operate on https, so if you are not in the habit of looking for that padlock icon on your browser’s address bar, now is the time to start doing so. And Bitcoin has really entered the online gambling arena with a thunder, and no wonder – it is extremely secure to deposit real money that way, since absolutely no personal information is ever part of the transaction. One can also use various ewallets, which act as an additional protection between you and your online financial transactions, including depositing real money at the online casino.
How safe are my money at the casino?
If you have heeded our advice and chosen a casino from our list of recommended websites, you don’t have to worry that your real money deposit at the online casino will be in jeopardy. None of those casinos will up and leave with your money, they want your repeat business and do play by the rules. So if you are worried about real money deposits, rest assured, the best casinos are here to stay and your funds are safe and secure.
Are my real money winnings safe at the casino?
Building up on the previous question, your casino winnings are equally safe as your deposits. The fact is that most casino sites that get labeled “rogue” receive the moniker because of messing with people’s winnings. Either not paying on time, finding reasons to hold or reduce your payout amount, or downright not paying at all. Sure, they love to process your real money deposit as soon as possible, but when it comes time to pay – good luck finding any help.
But the reputable casino websites are the complete opposite. They have no problems paying the winners, just like any casino should. They are in for the long haul and know well that the odds are always in their favor. So instead of cheating their players for the quick buck, they build solid reputation over the years, which pays thousand-fold over time. If you play only at those casinos, your winnings will always be safe. You would be able to withdraw whenever, as much or as little as you wish, without any worries if the casino will give you hard time.
How secure are the online gambling websites?
We touched up on secure connections earlier on, but let’s wrap it up here. The casino gambling websites will always use a secure connection, both for banking and for game play. Getting a little technical here, but what you should expect, nay, demand to see is a secure connection at the very least using TLS 1.3 with a SHA 256 algorithm and 128 bit AES. You can verify this through your browser, by clicking on the padlock icon and digging deeper in the options from there. Every online casino we have reviewed must use this unbreakable level of security.
Is my personal information safe at the online casino?
The answer to this question is both yes and no. If you’ve chosen a good online casino to play, rest assured that they are doing everything in their power to protect your personal information. There is nothing more detrimental to an online business than a security breach, and every business will try its hardest not to headline the news in such way. However, we have seen that even the very best fail – breaches such as at the credit bureau Equifax, already exposed the private info of every American, and they hold much more sensitive data than an online casino. Even the government’s OPM was breached by hackers, affecting tens of millions. So sadly, your personal information has already been exposed a few times over, those are just the times we live in.
Luckily, the casinos don’t really hold anything you can’t get with a quick search on the web – name, address, email, is about all of it. But that doesn’t mean that the online casino shouldn’t keep it safe and secure. If you were unfortunate to end up at a bad casino, you will likely see that information stolen or more likely sold, and your email would be flooded with casino spam from other equally worthless gambling websites. The good ones, however, will keep your information as safe as possible.