Illegal gambling: breeding ground for gamblers
Can you imagine looking for help on the internet to treat your gambling addiction case and that in return Google bombards you with bonus ads or casino recommendations that do not comply with national self-prohibition regulations? In minkcafe.co we analyze the tricks of illegal pages that take advantage of legal loopholes to take advantage of the vulnerability of users with gambling addiction problems.
Combating illegal gambling is the great challenge faced by governments and civil society associations to curb gambling addiction in the online field. ©Markus Spiske/Unsplash
In January of this year the British newspaper The Independent i was doing it again sound the alarm voice in the face of the continuous bombardment of paid advertising about illegal casinos on Google when seeking help about gambling addiction. The newspaper published in its article the results returned by Google when performing two simple searches with the words “gamstop UK", the equivalent of our General Registry of Game Access Bans (RGIAJ) .
The first search, conducted on January 2, showed four paid ads advertising up to 300% bonuses for playing at unlicensed casinos in the United Kingdom. The GamStop website, the last information that was intended to be obtained through this search, appeared in fifth place. These pages advertise illegal casinos that do not comply with the regulations that will come into force on March 31 and that oblige operators to mandatory adherence to the Gamstop program in order to maintain its license to operate legally in the Anglo-Saxon country.
On January 3, after warning Google of the seriousness of the situation , the newspaper repeated the search. The results were very similar: three paid ads, now from different pages, which also guarantee bonuses in casinos without self-prohibition. A Google spokesperson stated to The Independent that the company has suspended such accounts as “it is important to us that users see useful and relevant ads on this issue [responsible gambling]” .
Faced with this situation, Carolyn Harris, re-elected chairman of the British Parliamentary Committee on the Harm of gambling, expressed her skepticism about the system of self-prohibition itself and the will of the sector that includes the reliable online casinos to tackle this problem. On January 23, the parliamentary group established its work program for this year, which includes the convening of special sessions with experts on topics such as advertising in the sector, whose content serves to improve the current gambling law that the British government intends to review this year.
Gamstop was concerned about such results, since, when looking for information about self-prohibition of online casinos, users should only get results about relevant entities and organizations , and not ads that incite them to continue betting and playing, for more inri, on pages without any legal guarantee. Fiona Palmer, executive director of Gamstop, considers the collaboration between this organization and search engines like Google crucial to stop accommodating these types of ads for which illegal casinos pay affiliate companies for each new customer who registers on their site.
"Therefore, we are working with Google and other search engines to ensure that our [Gamstop] page appears predominantly in searches about self-promotion of online gambling and that these web pages are not included in search results.” – Fiona Palmer , executive director of Gamstop
What solutions are there to combat illegal online gambling?
Although paid ads about illegal casinos no longer top the results on Gamstop, pages promoting illegal casinos continue to appear among the first results on Google. ©Google
In minkcafe.co we wanted to check this situation on our own a few months later. When performing the same search, no promoted advertisement appears prompting to register at illegal casinos. The first result, which occupies the entire screen, is the official Gamstop page. However, a few results below we find (in third and fifth place, to be more exact) two domains promoting operators in which you can play and deposit even being registered in the Gamstop list. Once again, these domains get circumvent the programs implemented by Google to protect users the most vulnerable of online gambling as are the gamblers.
Until the appearance of the online modality it was simpler to restrict access to gambling to those with addiction problems. With the internet it is no longer. So far, no country has found the magic solution to a problem of unprecedented magnitude . The first step was to regulate the online sector and the adoption of measures to alleviate the effects of compulsive gambling such as the recent Royal Decree on advertising the current government in New Zealand. What is the next step to protect users? In minkcafe.co we will continue to report.
