Protective Protocol: Safe Live Dealer Casinos

iGamers Investigate: Are live dealer blackjack casinos safe?

Not everyone is especially concerned about the safety of their internet gambling experience. Those who don’t investigate the particulars of the websites they do business with are generally the less experienced among us. Personally, I’m a stickler for security, having grappled with the wrath of carelessness first hand.

That was a long time ago; a lesson well deserved and swiftly learned. And it’s one I take extra care to pass on, if only to those prudent enough to heed the advice. In the following context, you’ll learn the real deal behind live casinos, and how to stay safe while partaking in their unique gambling services.

First things first, we’ll answer the obvious question…

Are live dealer blackjack casinos safe?

There’s no clear-cut answer to this question. If I say no, you’ll close this page, never to learn the truth. But if I say yes, I’d be misleading you. The fact is, some live casinos are perfectly safe, while others only exist to deceive and bamboozle their unwitting patrons. The trick is to know the difference between the two.

There are a number of ways you can determine if your live casino experience is – or is going to be – a safe one. Below is a list of criteria; questions you can ask and answer with just a bit of due diligence, thereby granting you the self-assurance necessary to enjoy the experience without fear that your money and your personal or financial information may be at risk.

#1 Is it licensed in a reputable jurisdiction?

Reputable licensure is by far the most important aspect for any online gambling operator. First, look to see where the operation claims to be licensed from. It’s usually displayed as a logo at the bottom of the page, naming the country of licensure.

If there’s no claim of authoritative compliance to be found, close the browser and move on. If there’s a logo visible, see if you can click on it. It should link to the website of the licensing jurisdiction, depicting the status of the license (active, suspended, or terminated). If the link isn’t clickable, or the license is not active, close the browser and move on.

Assuming the operator is licenses, be careful about which jurisdiction is regulating the service. Some are far more honorable than others. The best licenses, with the strictest rules and demand for compliance, come from the UK, Malta, Isle of Man, Gibraltar, or any province of Canada.

Places like Costa Rica, Curacao and Panama, on the other hand, have very few rules to abide by. They might be legitimate, or they might not. Why take the risk?

#2 Is the payment processing system certified secure?

This is another one you should be able to identify just by glancing at the bottom of the operator’s main page. Payment security is verified by displaying the logo of the security firm that certifies the system. Some of the most common and trusted sources of payment security certification, and their respective logos to look for, include:

Certification Lab	Abbreviation	Logo
eCommerce and Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance	eCOGRA
Technical Systems Testing	TST
iTech Labs	iTL
Gaming Standards Association	GSA
BMM Test Labs	BMM
Certified Fair Gambling	CFG
Gaming Laboratories International	GLI

How many years has the website been around?

You can generally put a lot of stock in longevity, especially when an operators passes the criteria on the checklist above. A live casino with several years or more to back up its promise of reputability is far more trustworthy than a brand new (1-2 years old at most) website, even if it does prove to be reputably licensed and certified.

Finding out how long an operator has been in business isn’t the easiest thing to do. Old companies will often advertise their longevity as a highlight of their operations, but not all of them, and the new guys rarely do.

First, try looking at the copyright info at the bottom of the page. If it has a single year listed, it means nothing. An old date could be chalked up to lack of website updating, while a recent date could just mean they updated the page this year. But if it says a range of dates, something like 2008-19, you know it was launched in 2008.

If all else fails, try this quick tip for discover the age (or close to it) of any online casino.

Go to your favorite search engine and type, in quotations, the exact name of the live casino, followed by the term “established in”. For instance, to find out how old Jackpot City is, type this:

Most of your front-page results will come from online casino review websites. While I don’t recommend trusting everything you read on these sites (they are affiliates looking to make a buck, after all), if they all happen to say the casino was established in the same year – 1998 in the case of Jackpot City – we can assume that information is fairly accurate.

Do others have peaceable opinions of the operator?

Last but not least, there’s one more way you can find out if a live dealer blackjack casino is safe. Try running a quick search of the casino’s name on popular iGaming forums like Casinomeister. The truth is, even an operator that passes all of the above inspections can fall on hard times and go rogue. In such cases, you will surely read about it with a little digging through the forums. Just remember, you can’t trust everything you read, either.

People who feel they’ve been wronged love to rant about it. Then again, some people feel they’ve been wronged simply because they didn’t win, or they violated geo-location or bonus terms and don’t want to admit it. So don’t put too much stock in a single grievance or outdated criticism. It’s the mounting of similar complaints you have to worry about.

If you happen to find numerous protestations of things like slow payouts, all posted within the last 6 months, odds are you’ll want to keep your distance from that website. If there’s nothing negative in the recent comments, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. As the old cliché goes, no news is good news!