In part one we discussed how doing a little research to establish that the website you are considering playing bingo on is an established website which has been around for some time is an important first step. These companies will be regulated and licensed by the UK’s Gambling Commission which has tight controls both on how companies operate as well as making sure they are not up to any funny business in terms of how much of their income they pay out in winnings. As well as checking a company’s basic legitimacy by reading reviews and comments which show they have not appeared out of nowhere this will also give you a feel for what others who have played at a particular online bingo site think of the customer service and general quality of the product. You want to play online bingo on a site which provides both great customer support as well as an easy and intuitive interface.
There are plenty of review sites which are stuffed full of reviews which are fairly obviously fake and have probably been commissioned by the bingo companies themselves but luckily this is usually done in a very obvious way. You can quickly filter through all the overly glowing reviews or extremely negative ones and pay attention only to those which are balanced and give an obviously realistic account of a player’s experience with the good and weaker points, that any product or service is bound to have, outlined.
When you are on the website you have decided to play on just double check that it display’s the company’s license number and that the regulator is the UK Gambling Commission. This will normally be displayed somewhere on the home page, often in the footer, or in the ‘About Us’ section. Any website you are submitting personal information on should also be encrypted using an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). This is the case not just for online gambling activities but anywhere you are providing banking or other personal information. This makes it difficult for hackers to get access to your data. This kind of personal data theft does not happen as often as many would have you believe but it does happen as several high profile incidents recently with huge companies like Sony and Apple have shown. It is the responsibility of the company you are providing your information to, to ensure that your information is secure from any potential rogue operators that might try to break into their database. Safe websites will have a little green padlock icon at the top left of the url bar where the website’s address is.