Unofficial Regulation

Looking after and regulating the online world is an enormous problem for just about every business sector. As there is no opportunity for customers and businesses meeting face to face, it's largely impossible to guarantee the good intentions of either.

That said, in the great majority of situations transactions are completed in good faith, but, there are certain industries (particularly if significant sums of cash are involved) which are liable to experience more significant problems than others.

One example of this, over a decade ago, was the virtual casino sector, where shady organisations caused significant damage to the nascent sector's reputation. To deal with this issue, groups of users banded together and in the years since have created one of the most effective watchdog systems on the internet.

At the centre of this community are sites like Casinomeister, these sites have the unique goal of making sure that customers are not cheated by phoney casinos. With a remarkably strong forum where users can raise questions and give advice, and also a thorough accrediting system, Casinomeister has played a major role in improving the quality of entire sector.

There are, it should be added, a number of other websites around that do similar things, meaning that in addition to eCOGRA (the official regulator) there are a stack of unofficial (but respected) regulators, who, purely due to player power, work to keep users safe.

To further bolster this process, many of the bigger groups also hand out annual awards based on the opinions and experiences of their users over the year. You can often tell a good online casino by how seriously it takes these (unofficial) awards, because, even though they don't carry the influence of an official regulating body, they represent the opinions of thousands of unbiased users.

It doesn't mean that the online casino industry is flawless, there will always be issues with new companies who may or may not be entirely straight up, but the online casino world is a great example of an industry where the users have real power, and have joined together to make that influence felt for the good of everyone.