GeoComply publishes Ontario risk report on anniversary of gambling launch

GeoComply, one of the leaders in fraud prevention and geolocation, has released an anniversary report covering sports betting and gaming activities in the province of Ontario, Canada over the past year of regulated launch. Ontario officially launched regulated private gambling in April2022, and GeoComply has been an important part of ensuring that local consumers are protected during this period.

The Ontario Anniversary Risk Report celebrates the first year of regulated interactive betting and iGaming, GeoComply stated in a press release shared on its official website. GeoComply is presently the leading geolocation and fraud-prevent specialist in the province, and it has been able to do a lot of good since the market launched. According to the company, there have been 19.9m login attempts worldwide.

At least 219,000 login attempts had to do with cases of fraud. GeoComply was also able to pinpoint 1,045 "fraud rings" that targeted provincial operators. Commenting on these results, GeoComply Director of Risk Services Danny DiRienzo said:

"Online fraud is not uniquely a sports betting or iGaming problem. Recent data shows that cybercrimes were up 50 per cent in 2022 across all forms of e-commerce."

He did send a message of hope, nevertheless, arguing that GeoComply and the industry as a whole were in a very good position to combat such fraudulent practices in the first place. DiRienzo stressed the importance of location verification as a surefire way to protect the integrity of gaming operators, and the industry at large.

If anything, the report highlights how the regulated provincial market in Ontario has been a success, mostly eliminating criminal activity. GeoComply dug into the numbers a notch further. According to GeoComply, some 54,000 users tried to connect to Ontario operators at least 305,000 times.

The 19.9m attempts listed by the report were made by 744,000 users from around the world. Then, there were 3.3m location spoofing attempts from all over the world. "Spoofing" refers to the practice of using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to trick the operator into believing that you are located somewhere you are not.

The report also noted that 219,000 devices were cut out of gambling for fraud reasons specifically. GeoComply has been an important partner to operators, legislators, and companies. In Kentucky, the company’s detailed data reporting and analyses have possibly helped sway lawmakers into passing a sports gambling law.

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