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Scansafe Ltd, the cybersecurity vendor, says employees in
the United States are still visiting sports betting sites despite a new law
prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from processing online gambling
payments.
In the days approaching Super Bowl XLI, January 23 – 31,
attempts to visit online gambling sites among employees of Scansafe’s U.S.
clientele increased 77%.
Large businesses receive web-blocking services from
Scansafe. Each month, Scansafe examines 6 billion web requests.
President George W. Bush, last October, signed the Unlawful
Internet Gambling Enforcement Act into law. The measure forbids financial
institutions to process payments from gambling sites such as online casinos.
Financial institutions are expecting to receive new processing regulations from
the Federal government no later than mid-July of this year.
US customers are already receiving messages from online
casinos and gambling sites that financial institutions are pulling out.
PokerRoom.com has told their U.S. online casino customers to cash out.
The message on PokerRoom’s homepage read, “The remaining
companies that process cashouts from PokerRoom.com to our players in the United
States have contacted us to say that in the near future they will no longer
facilitate these transactions.” The message continued, “As such, we would advise
all American players that have not cashed out already, to do so immediately.”
Dan Nadir, vice president for product strategy at Scansafe,
claims there is no indication that the online casino provision, amended by the
US Congress onto a ports security bill last September, has had an effect on the
number of guests received by online casinos. Scansafe does not, however, keep
tabs on whether guests at online casinos actually complete bets.
Nadir foresees online casinos establishing alternative
payment mechanisms for their customers. “We suspected [the law] wouldn’t have
much of an impact,” he said doubtingly.
In 2006, visits to online casinos and gambling sites
represented 3.4% of the content blocked by Scansafe. Scansafe noted that 53% of
visits to gambling sites from the US were to sports betting sites, as opposed to
online casinos.
Scansafe blocks gambling sites and online casinos for
roughly 84% of it customers. Nadir said the reasons companies block employees
from these online casinos and other gambling sites are simple. First, they
doubt the security of gambling sites and online casinos. Second, they do not
want employees playing online casino games on company time.
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