Now that you have an idea of all the different things that go into making an Online Casino run, find out whether the Online Casino you want to play at is safe, secure and worthy of receiving your deposit?
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Just like land-based casinos have security systems to make sure everything runs smoothly, Online Casinos also provide security measures to keep you safe. We’ll discuss those measures more here, and we will outline how to spot Rogue Casinos and how to stay safe, secure and happy while you gamble online. When signing up or placing real money bets, a gambling site will likely ask for private information. You may feel wary of providing personal or financial details, but don’t worry! Read about the Verification Requirements of Online Casinos so you won’t come across any unsettling surprises.
It seems you can’t mention the word gambling without some shady connotations. Truth be told, most of us Vegas Masters know how to handle ourselves and budget properly when placing bets. Just in case, it’s good to review our Responsible Casino Gaming Section in order to stay smart and safe – and most of all – have fun!
Distributors of online games, operators, and gaming software companies, gambling, in particular, have two weapons they can use against cheaters.
The first one is making rules with legal documents, while the second one enforces rules with technology and finally the third is how rare players which have fallen victim to attackers are being supported.
First, there is copyright law such as the Copyright Act, title 17 of the US Code, and similar copyright laws that are in place or are being developed in all countries all over the world. These laws talk about the rights and the limitations to the rights of copyright holders and the conception of fair use.
Then there is the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) in the United States, which criminalizes both the production and distribution of technology meant to circumvent copyright surrounding security technologies that are meant to enforce copyright laws.
Although piracy, and thus copyright is not as big an issue in online games (especially the ones with a paid subscription model), there are still some cases where these laws are relevant, such as the case of emulation.
In pretty much every software application you install these days, and thus also in online games, legal documents are included. These documents are the EULA (End User License Agreement) and the Terms of Use (ToU, sometimes Terms of Service (ToS) or Terms of Conduct (ToC)).
The EULA is a legal contract between the software producer or operator and the end-user, stating how the software is supposed to be used. The ToU documents often accompany a EULA for any client-server game and restrict the uses of the game on the server-side.
They typically also include terms that forbid vaguely defined forms of behavior and communication and provide the game operator with the right to terminate the license at any time if these license agreements are violated.
The first direct way of safeguarding the security of a game and its players is by creating a stronger authentication method, beyond the standard login/password or email/password. Increasing security by adding additional layers is very much possible.
It provides a service that actively monitors an account and requests additional authorization from the user when a potentially unauthorized login attempt occurs.
If for example a player using this service is to login from a different location than from where he normally plays, he may be asked to call in and provide his personal PIN (chosen when enabling the service) to receive a unique, one-time-use security code before access to his account is granted.
There are many ways of cheating that can’t be detected simply by monitoring memory. Normally, game operator employees are there to detect these issues, either by directly spotting them or by monitoring the game logs. When a game becomes big however, with hundreds of servers worldwide and hundreds to many thousands of players on each of them, this method becomes simply impossible.
Because of this, the game operator has to rely a lot on reports from players to track down offenders, which no longer strictly falls under detection. Some actions do of course still trigger some alarms in the game logs, such as when supposedly unavailable items get obtained by players.
Reports from players are dealt with by game operator employees where needed using game logs and chat logs, and in line with the Terms of Use, temporary or permanent bans can be applied to the accounts of cheaters and attackers.
This protection method is an extension of the previously mentioned detection and response and is significantly different from general detection methods. To prevent players from using software to automate gameplay in online games, they sometimes feel the need to go beyond the usual anti-cheat methods to stop players from using this software.
Although I did not identify the cheat exploiting machine intelligence as one potentially punishable by law, many poker sites forbid it in their terms and regulations
An AI is embedded in the table game, and actively monitors what is happening on a player’s computer when playing.
It monitors the poker game process space and keeps track of DDLs running in that space, checks around in other processes, reading the text in the title bar of every window and scans the code of every process that is running on the computer.
This clearly is an invasion of privacy and has caused a lot of protest on forums and elsewhere. Yet, accepting the EULA and Terms of Use means that you agree to be subjected to this type of monitoring.
As long as these measures are included in the EULA and ToU, they are legally binding, unless successfully challenged in court. It certainly is an interesting topic in the evolving field of cyberspace law.
Educating people to make them aware of security issues and intrusion methods are one of the easiest methods in attempting to prevent cybercrime, especially when it comes to identity theft. It is an important topic in the financial sector (banks, credit card companies) and governments.
Similar, educating players to make them aware of the issue of compromised accounts is a cheap and easy method to combat this issue, albeit not the most effective method.
It is simply a matter of gathering the information that is common knowledge to many game operator employees as well as players and making it available to all players. The communities surrounding online gambling can play a big role in this, with players sharing information on forums and creating best-practices to deal with account security.
The game operator itself can contribute to this by highlighting valuable forum topics, but also by displaying security tips on login-screens and loading screens (“Tip of the day: An employee will never ask you for your password”).
One important feature of online gambling that most other games do not have, are the regular updates to these games, often in the form of patches. These patches bring new content to a game and update old content, but also fix bugs.
Depending on the impact a bug has, the probability it is going to be abused on a large scale and the location where the fix has to be applied (server or client), a game operator can choose to repair a bug immediately (hotfix), wait for the next scheduled patch or server restart, or implement an additional patch for players to download and apply to their client software.
When operating a subscription-based online game, especially when that game is a real money gambling, customer support plays a big role in assisting players with their issues.
When players get hacked (which is the faulty term players generally use when their account gets compromised) or scammed, customer support should assist those players adequately to prevent them from walking away from the casino website completely.
Players who find out their account has been compromised are referred to the customer support section of the casino website, where they can queue for assistance by providing their details.
Account support can then lock the account to prevent any more abuse of the account during the investigation. Because of the size of the player base, and the frequency with which accounts are being compromised, restoring a compromised account can take days or even weeks.
To somewhat ease the burden of this on customer support and to get players back in the game more quickly, the casino offers victims so-called care-packages to directly close the investigation.
These care-packages contain a predetermined compensation for the losses suffered from compromised accounts. Although this is not a very customer-friendly way of dealing with the issue, it is ultimately the player himself who decides whether or not he accepts it.
When it comes to in-game scamming, players can often directly deal with game operator employees in the game to have their lost funds returned to them and to have the scammer temporarily banned for his actions.
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