The online gambling environment has often been compared to the Wild West, for over the years many casino sites has gone live, only for them to suddenly shut up shop and vanish into thin air, often taking their customers deposits with them.
However, things have been getting much better thanks to many countries of the world now having put into place some form of licensing regime to ensure any type of gambling site that is based and operated from within their boundaries are licensed and regulated.
That is certainly the case in the United Kingdom, for the UK Gambling Commission is the organisation that is responsible for ensuring all casinos, betting sites, bingo and poker sites that promote themselves to UK residents on TV, Radio and in the Press too act responsibly at all times.
In fact, any gambling sites that does promote itself across the UK must obtain a UKGC gambling license and they are not that easy to get.
One aspect of obtaining such a license is that all such sites must ensure they comply with some extremely strict responsible gambling rules and regulation, that has been put into place to ensure anyone with a gambling problem is offered help, advice, and assistance to overcome those problems.
That is why UK licensed gambling sites now are required by law to offer their customers a range of responsible gambling tools, including things such as being able to take a break from such sites and being able to set themselves a deposit and loss limit too, before they set about gambling online.
GamStop Offers Online Gamblers a Helping Hand
For anyone that is in the grip of a gambling addiction problem, there often comes a time when they reach what is known as rick bottom and it is at that point in time they will finally reach out for help.
If you find yourself in that position, please understand you are not along and there is plenty of help and support available to you. Groups such as Gamblers Anonymous for example can and will help and support you, and websites such as GamCare are full of valuable information too.
There is another service that you should immediately make use of and that is the GamStop self-exclusion service, by signing up to it your real money accounts at all UK licensed gambling sites will be closed, and you will be denied any access to all of those sites in the future too.
Thank will ensure that you can never sign up as a new customer at those sites and will at least not have any temptation to gamble at those sites whilst you are recovering from your gambling addiction problem.
Please do reach out for help and support right now if you are at rock bottom or have come to the realisation, which many people do by the way, that their gambling activities are getting out of hand as help is always available to you.
Not All Casinos are Signed up to GamStop
Keep in mind though, if you are thinking about giving up gambling, there are thousands of different casino sites available online and only a tiny number of them are actually UK licensed casinos.
That does of course mean that the owners and operators of those sites are under no legal obligation to have to become part of the GamStop scheme, and therefore they can and will accept all players as new customers and allow them to deposit and gamble for real money even if they are on the GamStop register.
What I do always advice anyone to do who is committed to giving up gambling, especially in the online and mobile environments is to head over to websites that offer guides to non GamStop betting sites, for by doing so you will then discover just which sites are not part of that scheme.
Once you know just which casinos they are, you can then set about self-excluding yourself from each of them, and once you have done so you will never be put into the uncomfortable position of signing up to any of them if you find yourself lapsing when trying to stop gambling.
So please do make that extra step to self-exclude yourself from all such sites just in case you do ever get the urge in the future to start gambling again, the amount of time it will take you to self-exclude yourself from those sites will then have been very well spent for sure.
