When you’re working with money online, you need to trust the websites that you’re sending money to. In both finance and gambling, the site should be responsible enough to hold your money in a secure account and, when the time is right, return that money to you. This is very important in gambling when you want to cash out after a big win.

Unfortunately, there are sites out there that make the process difficult or outright deny you your money. Today we’re looking at how to check an online gambling site is genuine, so you never do business with or fall victim to scam sites and other unsavory operations. It helps to see what a legit gambling hub looks like when it’s in action, in which case we’d recommend www.fanduel.com.

Look For Licenses

In many parts of the world, facilities that allow and enable gambling need to be registered. They are typically licensed by a gambling commission connected to the government. In the US, each state has its own commission that oversees sports betting and other gambling games that are facilitated.
So, to make sure that a gambling site is legitimate, you should check to see if the business it’s connected to is properly registered and has the required licenses. They’ll typically be proudly displayed to let customers know that the operation is safe and sound. If it’s not on the site, you can always google around the casino site to find out if it’s genuine or not.

Read Reviews

While you’re on the page of your favorite search engine, you should also look for customer reviews of the gambling site. Evidence that people have interacted with a site before is good and, even better, you’ll see their feedback on if the site is a good one or not. Legitimate sites will be filled with mostly positive reviews alongside some negative ones, left by picky customers or those who lost their money.

If the reviews are dominated by negative sentiment, however, then you know you have a problem. The site is either dodgy or it’s just bad at its job, and either one means you should move on and try your luck elsewhere.

There are dedicated review sites for casinos that sometimes have blacklists of scam sites too. If your chosen gambling venue is on one, you should leave immediately.

Scout Their Security Measures

Take a deeper look into their website to see how secure it is. First, look for the prized padlock symbol next to the URL box. This tells you that the website is running SSL encryption and so it’s protecting your data as a result. You can be confident that details given to the site are much less likely to be intercepted and abused by third parties.

Next, try and create an account. If you’re unsure if the site is genuine, you can create burner emails that expire after a certain amount of time. Safe casinos will want your login details to be unique and this is best done through the combination of an email address and a password. If they tell you to include special characters in your password to make it stronger, even better.

Check for Two-Factor Authentication too. 2FA is one of the most secure practices that everybody should follow on sites and apps that involve money. A gambling site that offers 2FA definitely has your security in mind.

Test Their Bonuses

With so many sites on the Internet, competition is tough for those who want to stand out from the crowd. That’s why casino and sports betting sites will offer bonuses to draw customers in.

Try to claim their offers and see if the site actually follows through. If they don’t, it was a cynical ploy to pull you into the site. If they do, the offer was genuine and the site cares about keeping your interest as a consumer, so they’ll likely protect your accounts and your investments as well. Just go to the easiest bonus to claim, which are typically ones that you get just for signing up.

Make Contact

A site that you can make contact with has a much higher chance of being genuine than one that stays in the dark. Sites that welcome interaction will have social media, a telephone, and sometimes even a physical address listed on their website under a “contact us” section. The fancy ones will even have a chatbot that you can talk to on-site.

Use any of these and ask a question. You should get a quick and relevant answer, in which case there are people on the other end doing their job. If nobody replies or you get a cookie-cutter response, they could be a scam or just unprofessional, so you should avoid them.