Gone are the days of costly trips to Las Vegas. Every week, around two million consumers log on to more than 1,800 online casinos (Horn) to gamble from the comfort of their favorite chair at home, their desk at work, or even while they are on vacation. $3.5 billion dollars (Horn) will be needlessly lost this year on Internet bets. A valid question to ask is "Is it really the government's place to ban online gambling just because it is more accessible than real casino gambling?" Now the real issue arrives: How far should the American government go to protect citizens from the possible horrors of Internet gambling? Is it really the government's business whether a gambler chooses to do so in Las Vegas or in their living room? Some think the government must intervene and help out these lost souls, while others believe the government does not even have the right to know who is gambling and who is not. This issue is a fiery one, and will be debated ferociously in the present and future.
Risks of Online Gambling.
The risks of online gambling are endless. At the moment, there is not much protection for consumers against online casinos based in foreign countries that duped them by promising them huge payouts and simply not delivering. A person could also invest a relatively small amount of money and make a website, pretending to be a casino. If this casino were properly advertised, one day's worth of operations would garner them with countless credit card numbers and numerous large authorized deposits. Even if the online casino was proved to be reputable, players make more bets per hour than they would at the Mirage. As such, they lose money to the house twice as fast, according to Peter Kjaer, operator of an online casino (Horn). If hackers can find their way into government websites, it conceivably would not be too difficult to break into a small online casino's website and steal credit card numbers.
