We all want to stay safe when gambling online. Safety should always be your number one concern in any financial activity, and betting in particular. There are many potential pitfalls to online betting that it can be difficult to be aware of all of them. With most betting sites, there tends to be a few features which determine whether or not they are safe. Today, we’re going to look at what you need to know to be sure that a UK betting site is safe—from basic legal requirements to the nuts and bolts of how the site actually works.
Let’s look into this.
Security
Firstly, you need to make sure the site offers sufficient security features to protect your data. Every year, around 1,200 data breaches occur in businesses of all kinds, and this puts the sensitive data of every one of their users at risk. When it comes to sensitive financial information such as you need for a betting site, this becomes of utmost importance.
Ensure that the site has security features like 2FA, and that they have no major history of data breaches. There are also certain types of security software, such as firewalls, which safe betting sites will have. You should be able to find all of these features listed somewhere.
Licensing
Just as important as security is that the site itself is licensed. Any betting site that is operating legally in the UK will have received a license from the official Gambling Commission. This is the regulatory body which governs gambling in the UK, and ensures that all operators run within the confines of its rules.
Currently, the UKGC has issued licenses to around 2,600 operators for even more services, with more companies like Betzone added every month (June 2022). If the site you are looking into is not licensed by the UKGC, then they are operating illegally, and therefore stand a great chance of being unsafe.
They will not abide by any of the laws around fairness, and will not hold themselves to the high security standards of the UKGC. Avoid unlicensed sites.
Reputation
As with any industry, one of the best ways you can determine the safety of a company or site is to look at their reputation. For the biggest, most well-known, and most popular betting sites in the UK, you can more or less rest assured they are operating safely. If not, they simply wouldn’t have achieved the reputation they have.
While a good reputation doesn’t guarantee a site will be right for you, it does more or less ensure that you are safe using it. Your data is not at risk.
User reviews
One of the best ways to get a good feel for a site’s reputation is to look at their reviews. Any large betting site will have an equally large number of reviews somewhere online, and these are great ways to determine whether there are any recurring issues with a particular site.
If you see the same comment about a security issue or something like that coming up in reviews time and again, then you should probably steer clear. If, on the other hand, the reviews are glowing, then you can bet with confidence.
Functionality
Finally, the site’s functionality. Building a site that can handle the kind of traffic the biggest ones do is not easy. But it is the operator’s responsibility to do exactly that. If possible, before you bet with a site, navigate the site or app and see how it works. Is it quick and responsive? Or does it crash and freeze a lot?
If it does not seem to work as it should, then you may run into safety issues in its poor design. For this reason, the safest sites are always those which function the best.
There are a couple of basic things you need to know, then, before you ever touch a betting site. The first and most important things are that the site is licensed, and has robust security features. Ensuring these things will keep you safe in the most basic sense when betting online. Beyond that, a bit of due diligence on your part about the site’s reputation and functionality, and you are on to a winner.
