Online gaming has only been legalized in a few states. Virtual Private Network, or VPN technology, can among its features allow people to appear to be in a different location than they actually are, based on how they work. Some wonder if this technology can be used to play online slots when not in an allowed state in the U.S.:
Are there any VPN’s that people from say KY could use to get an IP address from a state that allows online gambling so I can gamble online from home since any state that it is legal in would be pricey to travel to?
Sam
No, this isn’t allowed and definitely isn’t advisable.
Online casinos are legalized on a state by state basis. When they are, the casinos that are approved to operate there can offer online casinos within the borders of that state.
Allowing players to play in states that haven’t legalized it would be one of those things that casinos would avoid because of how strict the rules and licensing are, plus many of the online operators also have physical casinos, many in states that don’t allow this.
So – maybe we don’t care about all that necessarily as players, but what it means for us as players is they go to a lot of trouble to not allow people to play in states that don’t allow online casinos. This includes detecting and blocking access to sites when players are using a VPN, and taking Know Your Customer (KYC) steps to verify who you are and where you’re playing.
We once had to disable GoToMeeting as a condition for being able to play one of the online casinos. The GoTo suite of software includes VPN capabilities, and even if we didn’t have that active, just having GoToMeeting running on a machine was enough for it to say we couldn’t play until it was disabled.
If a casino were to learn you were getting around their protections, the odds are pretty good you’d be banned from playing there. That ban could spread into physical casinos and even competitors if you’re put on the black list casinos share.
Casinos take integrity of the game quite seriously – it’s literally their ability to offer gambling put on the line if they allow rules to regularly be violated. So they’re going to do all they can to stop it, and as players is not advised to try to push against that.
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