How to pick a safe online casino

Before you start gambling away on any old online casino you should make sure the casino is safe and secure. It’s bad enough loosing your money on a band hand in poker or unlucky numbers in bingo, you don’t want to throw away the rest of your cash to online criminals and dodgy and/or fake casino websites. By following some simple guidelines you’ll have no trouble picking a winner.

Licensing and registration

All online casinos and bingo sites must to be licensed and registered if they want to operate legally. There are just a handful of countries that offer online gambling registrations and even few companies out there that license and regulate online casinos and bingo sites. For UK gamblers, the most common locations are Malta, Gibraltar and the Channel Islands.

Costs and bonuses

Does the site offer free play options? The online bingo sites and casinos offer free games as well as paid games. On casino sites these usually don’t offer any real financial rewards and are merely a place to practice, but they should still exist. On bingo sites you can actually play for free. You can even win large bingo bonuses at Costa Bingo, which likes to buck the trend of large bonuses being reserved for paid games. When you do play paid games the costs should be small and there should be a variety of prices to choose from. For example, with the range of bingo bonuses at Costa Bingo you can buy cards for 5p or 10p.

Security software

Online gambling sites are targets for cyber criminals because users give out banking information. Of course you need your own security online to protect yourself from viruses etc, but you also need to make sure the site has its own security software in place. A name to trust is Thawte; Verisign is another popular option. Remember to never give out personal information on the Internet or via the phone.

Contact methods

In the event that you need to contact the website because of a problem with a game for example, you want this contact to be virtually instantaneous. There should be several different methods for getting in contact with the online casino or bingo site including email, phone and live chat.

Banking

Every site should accept multiple forms of payment via credit and debit card and online payment accounts. Additionally, you should be able to upload your credit instantly and withdraw your winnings whenever you please with minimal processing times.