What Constituted a Secure Online Casino?

Tutorial: How to find the information that separates a secure online casino from a potentially unsavory one.

How do you tell the difference between a safe, secure online casino, and a shady operation that may be out to steal your money? Sometimes it’s not a rogue operator, but a careless one that didn’t put forth enough effort to protect its customers.

Much of the online casino industry operates under a regulatory campaign they call KYC, or Know Your Customer. It’s about time that players use a similar approach. For obvious reasons, we’ll call it KYO, Know Your Operator.

If we were selecting between two ATM machines to use to withdrawal money, and one was located on a shadowy street corner, the other within a brightly lit mall, we’d obviously choose the second one. Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to segregate the good sites from the bad ones. It’s not as simple as looking at a website’s face value to determine if it is a secure online casino.

Keys To Finding a Secure Online Casino

There are three major attributes we look for when deciphering the security of an online casino. The first is regulatory licensing, second is data encryption, and third, the longevity of the website’s reputation.

Regulatory Compliance

Every upright online casino business will be proud of its regulatory licence. Thus, scrolling to the bottom of the page should deliver a clear message of where the operator is licenced. It may be written in textual format, provided as a graphic logo, or both. The most reputable of all will actually provide the licence number, so you can cross-reference it with the regulator’s website.

Some of the most respected regulatory bodies include:

• Isle of Man
• Malta
• Gibraltar
• Alrderney
• UK
• Kahnawake

As for cross-referencing, have a look at Royal Vegas Casino, a website operated by Digimedia Ltd. The bottom of the website states:

Digimedia Ltd, of Villa Seminia 8, Sir Temi Zammit Avenue, Malta, is authorized and licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA). License numbers MGA/CL1/542/2008 and MGA/CL3/542/2008 were both issued on 16 June 2010. License number MGA/CL1/932/2013 was issued on 6 November 2014. © 2017 Royal Vegas Online Casino

To check out the information, go to Google and search for “Malta Gaming Authority”. We find its website is “http://www.mga.org.mt/”. Click the link, then, in the search window on the right side of that page, we can enter the licence number “MGA/CL1/542/2008”. This brings up a page that shows Digimedia Ltd owns this licence. Do the same with the other licence numbers, and the results should be the same.

Data Encryption

Every secure online casino will use minimum 128-bit SSL (secure socket layer) data encryption when transferring any sensitive information. When a player registers their account, enters login/password, or facilitates a deposit/withdrawal, this data is encrypted to ensure that it cannot be read by any prying eyes.

Finding this info can be tricky, because different operators place it in different areas of their website. To make quick work of it, go back to Google and enter the term “encryption”, followed by “site:casinodomain.com” (without quotations; replace casinodomain with the website URL)

For example: “encryption” site:royalvegascasino.com

Here we find the assurance of 128-bit SSL encryption on the casino’s Banking page, which also confirms, “The digital encryption technology used to secure transactions at Royal Vegas is the same as used by international banks, so your peace of mind is assured.”

Longevity of Reputation

The longevity of a secure online casino is important, because it tells us just how long they’ve been satisfying customers. A website that’s been around for a decade or more isn’t looking to go out of business by suddenly tossing their customers to the wolves. A website that’s only been up for a few months, however, hasn’t yet revealed its moral aptitude.

Even if an operator goes through the proper licencing process, and enlists appropriate data encryption technologies, that doesn’t mean it’s going to survive. Should the business fail, who’s to say its owners aren’t the duplicitous type, apt to take all the deposits, escaping to some foreign country, sipping fruity cocktails on a beach with your money?

Once more, I’ll use Royal Vegas as an example, and now you’ll know why. Not only does this operator display the first two key elements of a secure online casino, it’s been around since 2000. You won’t find a better reputation anywhere in the global online gaming community.