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In some countries, VPN is considered illegal for all purposes, not just for online gambling. Usually, this happens in countries with low or zero gambling activity like North Korea or Turkmenistan. Best VPNs for online casinos 2017 CyberGhost VPN – Available for free offering US and non US servers Spotflux Premium VPN – Free version available, annual and monthly plans, multi-device use,.
Plenty of people use virtual private networks to keep their details safe when browsing the internet. They want to protect themselves from hackers and ensure that their personal details don’t get stolen.
VPNs are also quite useful to gamblers as well. A gambler can use one of these services to play at sites they might not be able to access otherwise.
Of course, gambling sites in restricted jurisdictions block countries for a reason. Therefore, you may wonder if it’s illegal to gamble with a VPN at all.
This guide covers the basics of using a VPN along with the legality of the situation. It also discusses how the law specifically applies to VPN gambling.
How Does a VPN Work?
As the name implies, virtual private networks offer more privacy when you’re online. They also give you an extra layer of protection against cyber criminals.
Hackers try intercepting personal details, banking details, or any other information they get their hands on. These scammers can use such info to steal an identity, money from a bank account, cryptocurrencies, and other things of value.
Large companies became the first customers of VPN services. They used, and still use, virtual private networks to protect their sensitive information.
Of course, anybody can use long passwords and update their security settings frequently to protect info. But virtual private networks are the next step in ensuring that one doesn’t get hacked.
When you normally access the internet, you’re using an unsecure connection. Skilled criminals who want to steal your financial or personal details can trace this connection back to your IP address.
When on a VPN, though, you access the internet through a remote server. This server could be located in another city or even an entirely different country.
In either case, the virtual private network safeguards your location. It’s akin to a special wall built around your connection that keeps scammers out.
Put another way, the remote server accesses the internet for you. That said, prying eyes won’t know your true location if they try intercepting data.
A VPN Masks Your Location When Gambling
You can see that VPNs are highly useful for protecting your online activities. Of course, gambling sites already do a good job of this themselves through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology.
SSL encrypts information that you exchange with an online casino, poker room, or sportsbook. Most gambling sites use the highest level of SSL available.
You can still rely on a VPN for even more protection from criminals. However, you should be just fine thanks to SSL.
The real benefit of VPN gambling involves accessing sites that would normally be unavailable to you. For example, you might be from the US and want to play at the top UK online casinos.
Of course, the UK has a highly regulated gambling market that bars other countries. You won’t get any further than the homepage when visiting a British casino from America.
A VPN helps you get around this problem by masking your location. Again, these services access the internet for you from a remote server.
Most VPNs allow you to choose the location of the server you want to use. In the example above, you could select a London-based server to enjoy UK gaming sites.
Of course, you may question the point of circumventing British gambling laws when US residents can access offshore casinos.
Here are potential reasons why you might consider gambling with a VPN even when bookmakers, casinos, and poker rooms are already available to you:
- You want to play for a big progressive slots jackpot that’s unavailable in your region.
- You’re interested in a huge casino, poker, or sportsbook bonus.
- You want to play casino games from a certain software provider (e.g. NetEnt).
- You’re looking to play at large online poker sites (e.g. PokerStars) that aren’t available.
Most Countries Let You Use a VPN for General Purposes
Virtual private networks have earned a bad reputation for some of the activities that they hide. Illegal online gambling is just one of many crimes that you can commit using these services.
Nevertheless, most countries allow the residents to employ VPNs for general purposes. The average government has no problem with somebody using a service to protect themselves online.
Of course, laws aren’t the same across the board. Some nations completely ban virtual private networks to reduce any potential criminal element.
China, North Korea, Oman, and Russia are examples of places that don’t allow citizens to use VPNs under any circumstances. They treat VPN usage as a criminal matter.
You most likely won’t run into any legal trouble when using a virtual private network. However, you should consider checking your state‘s and country’s laws before doing so.
North Korea, for instance, has stiff punishments for those who use such services. You could wind up in jail if you’re caught using a VPN. This is why it’s so important to know local laws regarding virtual private networks.
Of course, no country allows you to break laws with these services. You can’t legally cyberstalk somebody, download copyrighted material, and hack into private networks just because you’re on a VPN.
Even the operators themselves have an obligation to report suspicious activity. Don’t expect your VPN provider to run cover if they believe you’re breaking the law.
Illegal Gambling Is Illegal Gambling
As long as your state or country allows virtual private network usage, you aren’t breaking the law by gambling with one. You might just be looking for more protection while betting online.
However, states and countries with regulated gambling markets often block those outside of their borders. Italy, for example, doesn’t allow the world to use their legal gaming sites.
Their regulated internet gambling market only applies to Italians. You can’t legally use a virtual private network to play at their sites.
The same concept goes with any other regulated jurisdiction. France, Spain, Sweden, and the UK are all examples of nations that have internet gambling laws and regulations in place.
You stand almost zero chance of being arrested when using a VPN to break gambling laws in most countries. However, these chances increase when you’re living somewhere like Russia or Oman.
Your Funds Will Likely Be Confiscated
Again, you probably won’t deal with legal retribution for VPN gambling. But you could face potentially harsh penalties at whatever site you’re using.
Many sites state that they have the right to confiscate your funds for violating their terms and conditions. You’ll definitely be breaking terms and conditions by using a virtual private network to get around country restrictions.
At this point, the gambling site has two options:
- Refund your deposit and close your account.
- Confiscate your funds and close your account.
Either way, you’ve broken the terms and conditions, and you won’t be welcome any longer. The only question is whether the site will also take your money.
The latter happens quite often in these situations. You must be fully aware and prepared for losing your money if an operator catches you violating their terms.
Should You Gamble With a VPN?
The best-case scenario when gambling online is to live in a top-tier regulated jurisdiction (e.g. UK). This way, you don’t need to break laws to gamble at great sites.
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However, you may run into situations where you can’t use the best casinos, poker sites, and bookmakers. You might think about breaking the law and a site’s terms and conditions in such cases.
Fortunately, you don’t have to fear being arrested in most cases. Only countries with draconian laws on VPN usage will consider taking extreme action.
But you do need to worry about what will happen to your funds and potential winnings. Certain real money online casinos have confiscated players’ money in these scenarios.
Vpn For Online Gambling Games
PokerStars caught pro Gordon Vayo using a VPN when he won an online tournament worth $692,000. They refused to pay him the $692k prize.
Vayo initially sued Stars for the winnings. However, he later withdrew the lawsuit after PokerStars proved that Vayo provided forged bank statements as evidence.
You may never win the type of money that inspired gambling sites to take a second look at your true location. However, you should keep Gordon Vayo’s story in mind assuming you do have dreams of winning big.
Conclusion
Using a VPN to get around a state’s or country’s online gambling laws is technically illegal. The UK, for example, blocks outsiders from gambling on their sites.
They don’t block other nations from their market for fun. The UK fully expects residents of other countries to follow their laws and gamble elsewhere.
Even still, illegal VPN gaming isn’t the world’s worse crime. You’re unlikely to face any repercussions when masking your location with a virtual private network.
The main thing that you need to worry about involves having your winnings and bankroll confiscated. Most sites leave themselves an avenue to do so if they catch you wrongly using a VPN.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Internet censorship is a sad fact of modern times. Too many of our readers live in countries where the government actively monitors the internet and blocks access to sites deemed “dangerous” or “immoral.” In every case, internet censorship is a result of authoritarian top-down control rooted in paranoia and an unhealthy fear of free information.
VPNs are a good idea for people in many parts of the world for many reasons. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the realm of politics. In some nations, people are routinely arrested, harassed and sometimes even disappeared as a result of things posted online. It’s scary.
But for today’s post, we’re going to stick with the slightly more mundane topic of gambling. Internet censorship isn’t just restricted to oppressive governments in faraway lands. It happens here in the West too. A growing number of governments are already restricting access to betting sites. In most cases, it’s an effort to protect the state-owned monopoly on gambling. In others, it’s a simple effort that comes from the delusion that “they” know better than you what is good, healthy and moral.
I don’t much care for other people thinking for me and I’d be willing to bet you feel the same way. So, I want to share with you the wonderful invention that is the Virtual Private Network (VPN). You can use a VPN to shrug off the shackles of government censorship and access the internet in the way it was designed to be accessed: without restriction.
What is a VPN?
Virtual Private Networks are tools that create secure, private connections between your computer and others on the internet. A VPN encrypts your data so other people can’t spy on you. It also masks your IP address so you can visit sites that restrict access by location.
If you work in an office, you probably already use a private network. This is the in-house intranet that you use to communicate with colleagues, share documents and access the rules manual. It’s safe because it isn’t connected to the normal internet. It’s just a bunch of computers linked together at work.
The disadvantage of private networks is they are disconnected from the rest of the internet. You can’t use them to e-mail your non-work friends, look up stuff on Wikipedia or gamble online. This is where the VPN enters the picture.
A VPN is designed to work across the general internet. It creates a virtual private network similar to the one in your office each time you connect to another website or online service. People use VPNs all the time in the regular world:
- To send sensitive e-mails to work while traveling
- To access private information while sitting in an airport lounge on a public network
- To access websites that are blocked in certain countries
Example of Use
Note: This is a real example but I’ve changed the name of the gambling site so I don’t cause them any undue stress.
AwesomeBettingSite.com blocks access to visitors from the United States. If you’re in the US right now and try to visit, you’ll get a pop-up warning telling you that ABS doesn’t accept visitors from the US. They block access by IP address out of an abundance of caution in response to US gambling laws.
Whenever I’m in the US, this causes problems for me because I frequently write about Awesome Betting Site and its various bonus offers, new games and whatnot. So what I do is activate my VPN with a click of the mouse, wait a few seconds and then go visit AwesomeBettingSite.com to do my research and finish my work.
How to Get Your Own
Getting your own VPN is easy. You don’t need to be a technophile to set up your own. So many normal people need VPNs these days that providers have simplified the process down to almost nothing. All you have to do is download the software, install it and click run.
These services do cost a little money though. Here in the United States, I spend $49 a year for my subscription. This isn’t bad by US dollars but it may be prohibitive in some parts of the world. There are cheaper services out there if you can run a search in your language for a VPN. You should find something affordable where you live.
Some VPNs are so security minded now that they don’t even require your name or credit card information. I know of a couple that are completely anonymous and accept payment via Bitcoin and prepaid debit cards. If your country’s gambling laws include punishments for players, you might want to look into that.
Choosing the right VPN is especially important for those of you in areas where the legality of betting online is questionable. Even if online gambling isn’t outright outlawed, it’s better to err on the side of caution. You want to use a VPN that encrypts all communications and does not store server logs on any type.
I have had the pleasure/displeasure of working with multiple VPN providers over the years and can tell you that it pays to pick a reliable VPN service. Currently, my favourite is IPVanish.com. IPVanish can make it look like you are a visitor from just about anywhere in the world and is effective at getting around web blocks.
Other VPNs I’ve tried were much more hit-or-miss. One worked great for a couple of years, but then began randomly dropping my VPN connection without warning me! This left me exposed with no idea that I was no longer connected through the VPN. Luckily for me, I don’t live somewhere punishes people for gambling online or viewing political material. Had that happened somewhere else, though…
One other VPN seemed to leak my location somehow. I’m not an expert on the ins-and-outs of VPNs, but I noticed that one big-name provider would often fail to get around blocks that I knew for a fact that it should have gotten around. That was enough for me to switch once again.
I have now landed on IPVanish and have nothing but good things to say about the service. What I like about it is it has many servers located around the world and actually works as intended when I try to visit various websites that are blocked in different parts of the world. I change my location often just in doing research here for OnlineBettingSites.com and this VPN has not yet failed me.
Some of the other features that convinced me to try IPVanish were unlimited bandwidth, a zero traffic logs policy (although I always take this claim with a grain of salt no matter how much I trust my provider) and the fact that IPVanish has an app just for the Amazon Fire Stick for private streaming.
Can You Gamble With A Vpn
What if my country blocks access to VPN websites?
In some places, the government doesn’t just block access to normal websites, it also blocks access to websites that sell VPN solutions. This can be a problem under some of the most restrictive censorship programs.
The good news is there’s always a way. There are hundreds of VPNs out there and they are all well aware of how many governments attempt to block them. With hundreds of providers (some of which operate dozens of alternative domains in order to fly under the radar), there’s no way the government can block them all. You’ll have to do a little searching around, but you’ll find something eventually.
Is it safe to use a VPN?
VPNs are safe in and of themselves.
However, a few countries enforce severe penalties on anyone caught using a VPN or accessing blocked material. In that case the risk is still very real. No VPN can ever be 100% effective against government surveillance efforts.
If you’re only using a VPN to gamble online, it’s probably not that big a deal. The risk increases as you break increasingly serious laws. Placing a few bets online is one thing. Plotting to assassinate the king is a whole other ball game.
As far as gambling goes, yea, you probably won’t have any problems. I won’t promise anything because things do change and it’s impossible to keep perfectly up to date on the gaming laws of every country in the world. This is where it would behoove you to do a little further research on your own. Good luck out there and be safe!
Can I use a VPN to play at sites that restrict my country?
No. I wish it was that easy because I’d be playing online poker right now. You can use VPNs to access offshore sites that block people in your country, but you’ll have a hard time depositing or getting paid. All that financial stuff requires banking information. Even if you use a VPN, find a prepaid card and deposit, where would you tell them to send your winnings?
People still try of course. I know of a few poker players in the US who used VPNs, offshore bank accounts and overseas mailing addresses to continue using PokerStars in the US. These guys got caught, their accounts closed and I believe they lost some money too.
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There may be people out there who do have a better method for playing offshore, but they aren’t talking. Personally, I don’t want to take the risk that just when I start winning money the site figures it out and confiscates my account balance.