Bonus Abuse: Who is to Blame?

[Davidvictorson]

So I was reading this article where a recent study showed that 71% of online gambling merchants have reported an increase in promotion abuse over the past year.

After surveying 1,700 fraud and payment professionals based at online gambling platforms, the study found that 62% of all types of online merchants had suffered an increase in fraud over the past 12 months. These operators detailed significant impacts on revenue as a result of online fraud.
Promotional offers are a common tactic employed by online gambling platforms to attract customers; such offers include loyalty rewards, sign-up bonuses and free bets.
Savvy players make use of multiple accounts and different IP addresses to exploit these promotions, finding loopholes that result in heavy financial losses for the companies targeted.
Another form of fraud that has seen an increase is online payment fraud, with 67% of merchants reporting a rise in payment details being taken from customer accounts. The high traffic of the websites involved can make it difficult for companies to clamp down on fraudulent activity.

I was sitting and wondering, there will always be bad actors in online gambling but who is to blame, the customers/fraudsters or the gambling merchants? Are the customers/fraudsters getting tech-savvy or are the gambling merchants getting complacent in checking and testing their website for loopholes? Don't these online gambling operators anticipate these frauds while building their websites? Why don't they invest in a robust fraud detection system before the fraud happens and not after?
I ask again who is to blame for the increase in bonus abuse, the customers/fraudsters or the online gambling operators?

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[Strongkored]

Both, the abusers in first place who is to be blame and also casinos who don't anticipate the possibility of misuse of bonuses, which is why Casinos must have a good security system that can at least reduce cheaters to abuse the bonuses or promotions they provide, because multi-accounts or cheaters will always there, that's why Casino should have something that can be reduce cheater to penetrated Casino system.

[Oshosondy]

I ask again who is to blame for the increase in bonus abuse, the customers/fraudsters or the online gambling operators?

If I should contribute my own opinion, there are different means gambling sites give bonuses, they do not just give the bonus, some are stingy and some can give up to 100% bonus if you deposit up to certain amount of money. Some people will open an account and later open another account to be taking advantage of the bonuses, but many still can lead to losses from the punter after receiving the bonus if gambling in an inexperienced way.

But if truly some gamblers are taking advantage of this, having more than one account which I believe would violate the terms and conditions of the gambling site. Gambling sites themselves needs to employ teams that their work is based on detecting frauds, online crimes and users having more than one accounts which is against their terms and conditions to reduced all these illegal activities.

[michellee]

To blame are greedy people wanting to earn more than they should and it is only natural that casinos would not allow this to happen in their casinos. If casinos give bonuses to new customers, it is also a normal way to attract people to come and play at their casinos. But unfortunately, many of them then abuse the bonus by creating another account just to get more. Somehow, the casino will know the abusers and block them immediately.

[NeuroticFish]

I ask again who is to blame for the increase in bonus abuse, the customers/fraudsters or the online gambling operators?

Asking if a scammer is to blame is... a non question imho. Of course that the scammers are to blame.

Now let's see about the online casinos. Here it's a bit more complicated.
They have to offer bonuses and promotions to stay in sync with the competition. Else they can easily rush into oblivion.
But...
1. Most of them don't have enough technical knowledge to avoid security holes.
2. Most of them don't have enough budget to heavily test and review the casino software, hence they won't see the holes.
3. Most of them don't have enough personnel in the first year, when more of the withdrawals should be reviewed, when more users may need support too.

So there are significant loses? Sure. But, I don't know the numbers, but some of that loses should have been in the development/test/operational budget and they're not.
Yeah, it's also the fault of the operators.

[Gianluca95]

Bonus abusing is something which exists since the starts of online gambling.

I can't read also that cheaters creates multi account because this can be avoided simply by asking an ID Doc in way to access to the promotion.

Anyway, a bonus abusing is also a legal practice, so, casino can only assumes initiatives by itself, without the help of anyone.

[_act_]

I can't read also that cheaters creates multi account because this can be avoided simply by asking an ID Doc in way to access to the promotion.

How about some gambling sites with lenient verification? In my country, the gambling site do not request for ID documents or facial recognition, just few steps to register, I remember the first betting site I used in my country, I had three betting accounts on the betting site before I later checked the gambling site ToS some months I have registered, I later had to leave two accounts alone and disused and continue to use just only one. Some people are very smart and can make this abuse possible. But I was not after bonus, I did not even got any bonus anyway from any of the accounts when I registered.

Anyway, a bonus abusing is also a legal practice, so, casino can only assumes initiatives by itself, without the help of anyone.

If it is in ToS, then it is an abuse, it is in the ToS of most of the gambling sites I have used before, so it should be seen not legal.

[Jawhead999]

What's the point of blame the casino? They didn't do any harm to anyone, while the fraudsters are hack the casino or find a loopholes to stole the money, do you think stole a money is correct? I don't have any idea why you're asking this stupid question.

Most of big casinos always hire someone to check all the codes and make sure it doesn't have any vulnerability at that time, some casinos even run a bug bounty program to make their security better. But, there's no completely 100% safe in this digital world and there's a chance it can got hacked e.g. centralized exchanges.

[Eternad]

I was sitting and wondering, there will always be bad actors in online gambling but who is to blame, the customers/fraudsters or the gambling merchants?

This is a very subjective question and varies depending on the actual facts given in the situation. Some casino is indeed telling the truth while some of them are using the benefit of the doubt to trap/not paid user that wins their bonus. The blame should be pointed to the one who committed mistakes in that particular scenario. We can't blame the technology since even the security of the casino tighten to filter these cheaters, There's always a way to find a hole in this to still exploit their bonus. I think KYC is the only way to finally stop this abuse but I doubt that players will still play so give or take, Casino is risking their bonus to still get customers and hoping they will lose before they can claim it.

[rodskee]

actually there is no one to blame but the action , and it is the Abusing , coming from the word itself "ABUSE" is this good? of course not right? so why need to abuse the site even if this is in your face?

if you are a honest person and only wanted to gamble then there is no need to take advantage instead let the team learn about the bug or the leakages so they can do the update.

[YuginKadoya]

This can surely be prevented if the developing team for that gambling site has an algorithm for 1 IP 1 account policy, I think they can do such a thing, even though I am not familiar with what the thing they have done, I really think the Rules on the gambling site is really important, and if there are rules people will surely have something to look and don't have done something like that in the first place, but I think there will be customers that may bypass something like these, you would surely never know the knowledge of your customers if there are no security features for the gambling site, the Customer can surely exploit those glitch on the system,

But overall I think both have to be blamed the weak system for the site could be blamed on the developers,  while the Customers that aren't follow the rules is to be blame aswell, so both are at fault here, in my opinion, if they will have a weak system people will surely exploit that, they should not have that issue in the 1st place, and if people are not following the rules that will also be disastrous,

[dothebeats]

No such abuses will happen if gambling platforms have reviewed their bonuses carefully and checked for possible loopholes that can be used against them. Not saying that it is solely the fault of the gambling platform, but the heavier weight of responsibility rests upon their shoulders. They can oversee who abuses what, and they know the ins and outs of the bonuses, so they should be the ones to make sure that everything is ready and abuse-proof before going live.

[iv4n]

actually there is no one to blame but the action , and it is the Abusing , coming from the word itself "ABUSE" is this good? of course not right? so why need to abuse the site even if this is in your face?

if you are a honest person and only wanted to gamble then there is no need to take advantage instead let the team learn about the bug or the leakages so they can do the update.

Actually, this is nicely said! Honest people don't take advantage when they run into bugs, they report it! If the casino team is smart they will reward the person who reported a bug!

Abusers will abuse! They are looking for ways to do it! The only reason why they gamble is to abuse casino promotions! So they are going around looking where and how to do it!

Nobody likes abusers, it's not nice what they are doing! But casino security is the casino team's responsibility! If they do a bad job they will be a target, and honest players will suffer from that too!

[Baofeng]

Abusers will have to blame obviously, because they will go to all extend just to cheat and take advantage of those bonuses and promotions from casinos. Funny thing is, you will find that this abusers will again to to lengths to make accusations to this online gambling sites and then once they've been exposed as abusers they suddenly become quiet. Casino's though should have at least some safety nets to capture abusers at the onset and not let them play and win big money and before accusations being thrown in their way.

[Wiwo]

This go sideways, both the site and the abuser are also to be blamed, it is expected of sites to get all the features tested for a long time to fix bugs that may arise from the operation which is why some sites first go on test mode before full lunch. We left in a world where honest people are hard to find and so if a scammer detected a security vulnerability in the system they will take advantage to abuse the system, So gambling sites should always update their security to beat abusers.

[Reatim]

Abusers must be punished thats it !!!

why need to ask if whos on fault here? isn't obvious that the Gambling sites are being created for the developer and for gamblers to have businesses , for owner/employees to make money and for gamblers to try their luck in playing.

and Abusers are not part of that so why do they need to be in concern here?

they must be caught and punished for everything they done .

[joeperry]

Both should be blamed. The operators should protect their business and the players should not abuse the system. No one will take advantage on the bonuses if they are really secured (No loopholes) and players should not abuse the bonuses as that is to spice things up and it is the strategy of the owners to gain more players but in reality only the business owners are getting the risk.

If they found out a user that is taking advantage, they will do anything to protect it such as confiscating or blocking the account and in result the abusers will report and will play a victim and no matter what happened that incident will reflect in their reputation.

[LodisMcguire]

I was sitting and wondering, there will always be bad actors in online gambling but who is to blame, the customers/fraudsters or the gambling merchants? Are the customers/fraudsters getting tech-savvy or are the gambling merchants getting complacent in checking and testing their website for loopholes? Don't these online gambling operators anticipate these frauds while building their websites? Why don't they invest in a robust fraud detection system before the fraud happens and not after?
I ask again who is to blame for the increase in bonus abuse, the customers/fraudsters or the online gambling operators?

I think no one could be blamed here because that's how the cycle works.The casino giving such bonuses probably know that it will be abused by some player.But the profit is outweighing the loss,so they will let it happen until they feel some significant loss and will then take some serious countermeasures.After all,it's just about a cycle of profit and losses.

[madnessteat]

I don't think any of them are to blame, but they all need to pay attention to it and counter fraud. Casinos make money at the expense of their customers, so they have to provide safe storage of user funds. But most casinos buy software from software creators and don't have such a high level of technical specialists as cheaters. Customers should understand that because their private keys are kept by the casino.  

[vennali]

So I was reading this article where a recent study showed that 71% of online gambling merchants have reported an increase in promotion abuse over the past year.

After surveying 1,700 fraud and payment professionals based at online gambling platforms, the study found that 62% of all types of online merchants had suffered an increase in fraud over the past 12 months. These operators detailed significant impacts on revenue as a result of online fraud.
Promotional offers are a common tactic employed by online gambling platforms to attract customers; such offers include loyalty rewards, sign-up bonuses and free bets.
Savvy players make use of multiple accounts and different IP addresses to exploit these promotions, finding loopholes that result in heavy financial losses for the companies targeted.
Another form of fraud that has seen an increase is online payment fraud, with 67% of merchants reporting a rise in payment details being taken from customer accounts. The high traffic of the websites involved can make it difficult for companies to clamp down on fraudulent activity.

I was sitting and wondering, there will always be bad actors in online gambling but who is to blame, the customers/fraudsters or the gambling merchants? Are the customers/fraudsters getting tech-savvy or are the gambling merchants getting complacent in checking and testing their website for loopholes? Don't these online gambling operators anticipate these frauds while building their websites? Why don't they invest in a robust fraud detection system before the fraud happens and not after?
I ask again who is to blame for the increase in bonus abuse, the customers/fraudsters or the online gambling operators?

Both are to blame but, firstly. The customers trying to take advantage of promotions put up by the sportsbooks and going against the sportsbooks TOS and colluding/making multiple accounts to get bonuses. Secondly, The sportsbooks that make very attractive but slightly unrealistic bonuses which needs external help most of the time to complete the bonuses. These Bonuses do attract a ton of customers but in the end, end up damaging their reputation as well. All the customers making multiple accounts, once the sportsbooks find out about it and close their account. The fraudulent customer would highly likely cry foul and write scathing reviews about the sportsbook, pleading his innocence. It becomes very hard to determine whom to believe. The Sportsbook for banning a player or the paying customer who pleads innocence.