Best Tips for Choosing a Secure Casino
Before you start playing, we stongly encourage you to read our tips on How to choose a safe online casino. The online casino world is as wide as it is varied and while you may know a lot about one or two casino games, there are probably many that you know little about. In an effort to educate you accordingly, we have compiled the internet’s definitive guide to online casino games.
A number of factors can determine the quality of a real money casino. Holding a license from a respected regulating authority is a good indication that a casino is meeting high standards of security and player protection.
The UK Gambling Commission and the Malta Gaming Authority are two of the most respected regulators in the industry. Holding a license from one or both of these makes a casino a lot more trustworthy.
The license/s a casino holds also determines where it can offer its services.
Even though the world wide web is available around the globe, online casino sites must adhere to certain casino rules about who they allow to use their services. Casino restrictions are determined by the national laws of different jurisdictions as well as which license/s the casino holds.
The list of restricted countries will usually appear in the casino’s terms and conditions section. This is also the place where you will be reminded that you must be of age to gamble in your home country in order to be allowed to play at the online casino.
If you are in doubt (or if the casino bonus terms and conditions are not clear), you should contact online casino support.
Check out the software of online casino
It is important to remember that online casinos not only offer players online slot games but are also responsible for keeping their own site secure and working correctly. This includes handling player payments.
Take a look into the back-end software your casino of choice uses. This information is often available on casinos’ About Us pages and can also sometimes be found in the footer section of the homepage.
A quick bit of research will help you learn more about the sort of software the casino uses. While this is not a definitive way to determine the site’s security levels, it can help to give you an overall picture of the site’s workings and the kind of infrastructure it depends on to keep things running smoothly.
Quality customer support at online casinos
It is only natural to hope that you never need to get in touch with an online casino support. That all your withdrawals are smooth and quick, that all your questions are answered in the FAQ.
Sadly, life can sometimes throw you a curveball and when that happens while you’re gambling, it’s the casin’s customer support team you will need to get in touch with to solve things. Offering a reliable and easy to reach customer support structure ensures that when problems arise, casinos are able to resolve the issue without delay and hassle.
So, how do you know if a casino offers good support? First, take a look at the support channels available and when the operating hours are. A casino that offers three different channels, which are available 24/7 will be much more trustworthy that a casino that offers one channel and for a limited number of hours.
You can find out more about the quality of a casino’s by doing a little research. Ask a few simple questions via email or live chat and wait to see how long a response takes and whether your query is answered satisfactorily and in a short amount of time. You want the support agent to be professional and courteous, while doing their best to answer your questions fully.
Again, this isn’t a 100% failsafe way to weed out the secure casinos from the others. Even a top-notch site, with normally excellent customer service, can let players down once in a while – it’s good to remember that the agents handling player questions and complaints are human beings after all. However, having consistently terrible customer service will raise a red flag for players and can reflect badly on a casino’s reputation.
Hear what other players say
There are millions of casino players worldwide and many of those form part of online networks and forums where they talk about their experiences within the world of real money casinos.
These forums are especially handy for someone looking to check up on a casino’s security track record. Such sites are the perfect place to read unbiased accounts of real-life player experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly.
It is not unusual for even a great and safe online casino to have a small number of bad reviews – even the best businesses sometimes drop the ball when it comes to customer satisfaction – but casinos with one bad review after the other should be given a wide berth or at the very least, treated with a degree of suspicion.
Our top casino picks
As fervent casino players, it should come as no surprise that we have narrowed down our (long) list of favourite casinos. These are the names we will always throw out there when asked the question, “where should I play?” Take a look at our casino reviews to learn more about them and what makes them our top picks.