How to choose a safe online bingo site

Online gambling has many benefits, but it also has many disadvantages too and these stem from the lack of policing and monitoring of the Internet. That’s not to say there aren’t hundreds of safe online bingo sites to choose from, but it’s important that you know how to pick a winner. It’s your responsibility to choose a safe site, so here are some tips on just how to do that. 

Licensing

All bingo sites need to be licensed in a fixed real-world location if they are to offer legal gambling. This licensing information should be clear and easy to find; look for government symbols and logos as well as links to external licensing pages. The main licensing countries are Antigua, Australia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Canada, the UK and the West Indies. Avoid sites that are licensed in Belize, Venezuela and Eastern Europe. Costa Bingo is licensed in Gibraltar. It has a link to the information services section of the Government of Gibraltar’s website on its homepage. Costa Bingo makes this clear and obvious and thus is a safe online bingo site.

Security

Obviously wherever money and your personal details are involved you need to be 100% sure the site is safe and secure. Look for security logos from leading web security firms. A popular and reliable site security manager for bingo is Thawte. Make sure the site offers secure payments and doesn’t share your information with third parties. This kind of info can be found in the terms and conditions or FAQ sections of the website.

24/7 support

It should be overwhelmingly easy to get in contact with the bingo site. Numerous methods of communication should be offered including ‘snail mail’ post, email, fax, live chat and the good old-fashioned telephone. If you can’t access the site by any one of these means at any time of the day you need to proceed with caution.

Banking

You should be able to use various methods of payment to buy your bingo cards including Mastercard and Visa. These mega companies make their own checks, although you shouldn’t rely on that as a green light to safe play. Payments should also be made within a set time frame which should be detailed in the ‘about us’ or ‘banking’ sections of the site. A payment should be processed within 48 hours; if payments only go through once a month for example, this is a sure fire sign that something is not quite right.