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Gambling With a VPN; Is It Worth It?

If you want to remain anonymous as you gamble, an a VPN really help you? And if you want to access casinos in exempted countries, is using a VPN the way to go? We think it's not worth it for a very obvious reason. Read on to find out more...

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Image source: Flickr

So, is it really worth gambling with a VPN? It’s not really surprising that so many countries have licensed online gambling. After all, there’s a lot of money to be made in the form of compliance and taxes. To that end, it’s in the countries interest that its players are actually playing from within the boundaries of that particular countries borders. The last thing it wants is for money to be going offshore. You can get around this by using a VPN or Virtual Private Network.

This little piece of software makes it appear to outside eyes as if you were withing the relevant gambling market area. Even when you playing from a completely different country. This would, or example, allow you to play casino games in Canada when you were in fact situated at home in the UK. In this situation, you would be technically breaking the law.

Play without a VPN easily at 1xBET

What Is a Virtual Private Network?

You don’t need to be a scammer or shopping in the dark markets in order to find benefits in using Vpn’s. It just allows us to surf the web and remain absolutely anonymous. On the whole, many of its uses will have concerns about online privacy and/or suffering from some form of cybercrime. This can be in the form of stolen identities, banking details, or anything costly and/or highly inconvenient to rectify.

As an aside, you can reduce the chances of falling victim to cybercrime by:

Creating long and detailed passwords.
Updating security settings on various sites (e.g. Facebook).
Avoiding giving out information to sketchy websites or apps.
Using a VPN.

Arguably, a VPN is the best method of making your browsing secure. When you normally excess the internet from you home, it goes via a local server. But with a VPN, that server is in a different country. If you check your individual IP address after connecting to a VPN, you’ll see that other people will think you somewhere other than your resident country. It’s rather as if their remote servers are accessing the internet on your behalf.

Why Do Gamblers Use VPNs?

The first adopters of VPN’s were large corporations who wanted to protect sensitive information. But gradually, VPN popularity grew within the general public’s use of the web. Today, probably as many people are presently using a VPN as those who are not. Anyway, it’s not a huge leap from wanting to keep your details secure for shopping on Amazon, to wanting the same privacy but for gambling wen sites. Having said that, many gamblers are using VPNs as a means of gaining access to sites that would normally be beyond reach.

Most gamblers use a VPN to access sites they can’t normally reach. If, for example, you want to play sites with progressive jackpots, and can’t because you’re sitting in the wrong country, then a VPN will hide that fact. You’ll find that for a professional online poker player, many tournaments are beyond reach, including PokerStars and GGPoker. For example, only US persons with a New Jersey IP address ca play PokerStars. You would need to be in Canada or Mexico, or use a VPN to take part. Crazy! But with the VPN, you could be anywhere, including the US, and it’ll hide your real address.

Is a VPN Legal?

Now the answer will vary considerably from country to country. Certain more authoritarian countries like Russia, China, Belarus, Oman and North Korea have broad flat out bans on all VPN activity. Then there are the countries with censorship laws, which might not explicitly ban them, but will make their use very risky. With the former more restrictive countries you can expect to see some jail time. With the latter, a fine and confiscation of equipment. One the one hand, it could be argued that this type of governmental behavior is akin to Nazi Germany. Yet there are others who would state that we misunderstand these laws. They are there to “protect us” and help reduce terrorist or criminal behavior. Yeah, right.

In the US, the use of VPN’s is perfectly legal. Ahem! OK…apart from cyber-stalking, downloading and selling copyrighted material, gambling online where doing so is illegal and hacking into private networks. And keep in mind that the actual VPN countries are obliged to report any of the above activity to law enforcement when detected. Feeling free in the land of the free? Didn’t think so either.

Is It Possible to Legally Gamble with a VPN?

But we should automatically assume you’ve gone from poker player to hardened criminal in a couple of mouse clicks. Maybe you want to play a perfectly legal site, that’s open to you as a customer, but with the added protection of playing through a VPN. (Yeah, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it!). At the end of the day, you’re not that stupid. You know exactly what you’re doing. So we’ll say it for the sake of saying it: you gotta check out the laws in each particular jurisdiction before trying to log on via a VPM. For example, you can’t legally access a French casino if you happen to be in Brazil. Likewise, don’t go trying to use a VPN for any purpose if you’re in Russia. Here all virtual private networks are banned.

What Happens If a Gambling Site Catches You Illegally Using a VPN?

If a gambling site detects that you’re using a VPN, are they going to send out a goon squad to kick in your door, cut off your hands, sexually assault your wife and blind your kids? Nope. In reality, they can see you’re using a VPN, and they really couldn’t give a flying f**k. After all they didn’t make the legislation banning VPNs. They just want gamblers, with real cash, coming from any country (or planet for that matter). So, they simply don’t care.

Be sure that law enforcement has better ways to spend their time. Like the recreational killing of black folks or eating donuts. we have never heard of a single prosecution of someone playing poker online whilst using a VPN. So chill.

The Sites Will Be Playing You

The main drawback of playing via a VPN is how on earth are you going to collect your winnings? You can’t put in the bank details from a banned country. It’s always written in the Terms and Conditions that they have the right to hang onto any monies you might win. And remember that you’ll be needing to deposit some sort of bankroll before you start your gambling in earnest. They can easily accept that, only to seize it a few minutes later. Then who are you going to call?

VPN — Sooner or later something will block your way – Image source: Flickr

Is It Worth Gambling with a Virtual Private Network?

The short answer is nope. If you have to mask your location in order to play at a certain casino, then you really need to get a life. Sure, you can enjoy the benefits of playing at a casino anywhere in the world. So, if for example, you’re in the US, where they restrict access to most online gambling sites (cause it’s the land of the free), then a VPN can be a huge boon. And though you won’t be arrested for using a VPN, it all becomes totally pointless when you’re unable to collect your winnings. Have a quick look through the T&C’s of any online gambling site and you’ll see that they have a clause that covers those sorts of gamblers.

And the thing about online casinos is that they hate paying out. Period. So, the minute you win a few dollars, they will be looking for any and every possible move, that can thwart your possibilities of getting your sweaty mitts on “their” money. If you happen to be sitting on your sofa playing poker or blackjack in, say, Brazil, and you win jackpot slots in Italy, then what do you think is going to happen? That’s perfectly correct. Nothing! So to that end, just stick to playing where there’s at least some possibility of making some cashback, as well as being able to collect it.