With any product or service, customer satisfaction and safe usage is always at the centre of a business operation, which makes online gambling no different. With the eSports betting market expecting to reach $13B dollars by 2020, the security of users, sites and money transferring is a serious topic.
User Safety
Betting is already a risk and reward type of market, so additional losses via fraud do not help the reputation of the industry. On a small scale, each user is responsible for what site they pick, what game and how much they wish to risk. And because the market is so large, there are plenty of people after your money.
Skin Gambling
The rise and fall of skin gambling has been an interesting topic over the past 5 years, with huge scandals occurring within the Counter-Strike scene. This shakeup of controversy led to some huge changes in legislation surrounding gambling sites from a governmental point of view. Recently, the Netherlands and Belgium restricted users from opening CS:GO cases, https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2018/07/20618/.
Governing bodies are attempting to crack down on the underage use of in-game gambling systems, which puts pressure on sites to ensure their service is being used by adults and not being marketed towards children. In turn, the security of these sites has increased, not only to protect its loyal users, but to prevent the worst case of receiving a cease and desist request from governments.
Site Security
This area of esports betting largely falls under each company’s requirement to follow GDPR and other privacy laws. When you are betting online, the site you play on has a responsibility to maintain that your data is kept private and not sold to third parties. The general information provided to advertising services, shouldn’t be revealing your private information. When the legitimacy of a site is at question, so is its revenue methods. It is also good to check the betting site you’re using has an SSL certificate, ensuring your information is encrypted.
This is not only a security issue within esports gambling, but also the whole of the internet.
Payments and Bank Credentials
Gambling requires money, and money comes from your bank account, well in online gambling at least. Although lots of sites accept in-game currencies or weapon skins as deposits, which skips over the depositing from bank services, a lot of sites want cash payments made through your bank account or another e-commerce service.
The beauty in esports betting is that you don’t have to leave your chair to place a bet on your favourite teams. Lots of sites are now accepting PayPal, Skrill, bank transfers, pre-paid cards and cryptocurrencies as acceptable deposits, each of these payment methods has its own security issues, which comes back to the issue of fraudulent activity to benefit off of loop holes in the systems.
Make sure that the payment option you’re using, protects your rights as a user and has a procedure in place to help prevent you losing money to fraud.
RNG
How does it always happen to me? Jokes aside, there are a lot of 3rd parties that test casinos and betting sites to ensure that the algorithms they are using are producing truly random and fair results on games such as skin upgraders and roulette. They will also check the odds against other sites to figure out if the company is providing fair odds on the games. If you can, check the certificates of a company and see if they have been verified by a company like TST, that way you know your money is getting the fairest treatment.
Licenses and T&Cs
A gambling license is one the best indicators of a legitimate gambling site. Before you deposit your money get up to date on gambling licenses and how they work. This is the first layer of security for you. Check your governments gambling commission for information on the different licences that sites can use.
Also read the terms and conditions and take a copy of them, some sites may alter their conditions to try and gain an advantage over players. If you make a support request and include a copy of their terms at the time where you made your bets, it can give you the evidence to protect your investment.