As you probably already know, gambling is a practice with a history of several thousand years. People have always enjoyed betting on the outcomes of various kinds of situations. What began as a healthy competitive hobby all those years ago has long become one of the most lucrative industries in the world.

Thanks to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, as well as numerous other casino capitals of the world, gambling has grown into a cultural phenomenon that no longer encompasses simply the act of gambling. Huge casino hotels with multiple restaurants and hundreds of rooms are now the most popular places to put down some of your money and try your luck in one of the many games they offer.

However, thanks to the modern advancements of technology and the internet, the online world brought us a brand new take on the traditional casino gambling. Online gambling is a rapidly rising industry, and although it is hardly new according to the contemporary tech standards, it is still very much expanding and advancing with more and more virtual casinos sprouting about a year in and year out. There is no end in sight as it has long been clear that this is both the gambling of the modern world and of the future.

In order to successfully navigate the vast internet gambling world, one has to possess a certain kind of mindset and be ready for a few challenges. The biggest of these is the knowledge on how to stay safe while gambling at an online casino. In this article, you will learn just that.

1. Licensed Online Casinos

First of all, we ought to mention the most important rule about online gambling, which is to only gamble at genuine, licensed online casinos. Before you first sign up at an online casino, make sure to do some research about it and check if it is legit. Do your part to prevent a bad experience like scams or theft by reading other people’s reviews and checking the casino’s track record.

You can spot a genuine casino without much trouble as they will never try to hide anything. In addition, the have to follow certain guidelines and rules if they want to hang onto their gambling license. Since they are serious about their business, you will not have to worry about being taken advantage of while gambling. If you come across a dodgy and suspicious website that claims to be a casino and asks for your credentials, move on from it.

2. Encrypted Login

Of course, a real online casino, just like any other online service, has to have certain encryption on their login sections. The log-in system of an online casino has should be secure even more secure than social media for example, because large sums of money are directly associated with the users’ accounts. Therefore, every player who wants to register has to secure the account with a password, which then becomes encrypted and stored in a closed, safe database of the casino.

Continuing from the first entry on the list, once you deem a casino trustworthy and secure enough for a gambling site, open an account, think of a strong password, and remember it. It goes without saying that you should never trust anyone with your password. Most popular and famous online casinos have strong encryption methods in place and it is extremely hard, almost impossible for the hackers to steal away personal data of the registered players.

3. Privacy

Like banks and other institutions, licensed online casinos have to keep certain details of their clients private in order to keep them safe from misuse. Like the passwords mentioned above, other relevant information like your home address, your full name and age, and your credit card info should never be visible or in any form present for the general public and the online casino employees to see.

If a casino you want to gamble on openly asks you to provide such information in weird and pushy ways, they are most definitely trying to steal your data and use it. Legit casinos have anti-fraud departments that are allowed to access your personal info on their services, but they use it just to make sure they remain protected and out of the hands of anyone but them. They are there to efficiently and effectively protect your data. Remember that none of the actual employees can access your passwords, just like bank clerks cannot access your bank accounts.

4. Increased Online Security

Except for the security of their users and their personal information and passwords, casinos also go a step further in securing their whole operation. Their top-of-the-line cybersecurity thwarts hackers away, but most online casinos also utilize RSA tokens, electronic gadgets that generate random codes. The user then has to input the code as well as the password every time they attempt a login. Such a two-way authentication system doubles the overall security and further eliminates any chance of theft. These codes are randomly generated and new every time, so there is no way to predict them or steal them. Once a code has been used, it drops out of the pool of possible combinations forever.

5. Payment Methods and ID

While paying close attention to the aforementioned security features of an online casino, one also has to make sure that trusted and legitimate payment methods are in place, both for the withdrawal and for the depositing of gambling funds. A clear indication that an online casino is true is the names of established online payment brands on their page. If you see MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, and other famous payment options everyone uses, the website and its payment options are safe.

What is more, trusted casinos also ask you to provide your identity one more time before every financial transaction. By doing this, they are verifying it is you behind the screen and not someone else. Casinos that take security very seriously sometimes ask the users to provide copies of IDs before accepting first deposits, or before allowing first withdrawals.