New Software to Block Online Casinos

June 02, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

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One of the major concerns of anti-online gambling activists is that children, especially teenagers, may be able to play in online casinos. Not only is the concern that the children will place bets online and lose money, it is also that they will become addicted to gambling at a young and impressionable age. Parents are also concerned that their children may become involved in online gambling, and find it very difficult to monitor their children's Internet usage.

A Canadian company has come up with an improved system to keep children away from online gaming. The new software has been developed by the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation, and has been designed especially in order to prevent children from going to online casino sites, either on purpose or by chance.

The new software, BetStopper, can be used by concerned parents in order to block gambling sites from their underage children. The Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation has designed the software after doing research into exactly what was needed, and has released it only after it has been tested by a large number of families.

A spokesperson for Nova Scotia Gaming, Marie Mullaly, said that the software has been tested by 250 families, who found it to be very effective and quite efficient. She explained that the software looks for key words in both the URLs and the content of the website. Mullaly explained that BetStopper is the first program of its kind to reach the high level of performance that it does. She said "It has a heightened or enhanced level of intelligence that allows it to have a 98 per cent rate of blocking sites."

Mullaly noted that not only will sites that use real money be blocked by the software, but also free gambling sites, and also sites that introduce and teach gambling methods, which are the forerunners of online gambling sites that use real money. In this way, sites will not be able to entice children to become accustomed to gambling, albeit without actual betting.

The Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation have seen that statistics show that male adolescents have a fairly high rate of gambling activity, mostly in connection with sports betting. Surveys showed that nearly one out of every five eighteen-year-olds said that they had already gambled at online casinos.

Experts believe that the best way to protect children from online gambling is for parents to take the initiative and use software such as BetStopper. It is certainly preferable to protect children in this way, instead of at the expense of responsible adults by having governments enforce online gambling censorship.

The software can also be used successfully for those with gambling problems who need some help to keep online casinos out of their homes.