For people who game online, digital life has become more comfortable and more dangerous at the same time. In 2025, cyberattacks grew by around 21% worldwide compared with 2024, with Europe seeing the biggest regional jump in weekly attack attempts per organization.
At the same time, online fraud continues to drain billions of dollars from users in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, with increasingly sophisticated scams targeting gamers and bettors.
In this environment, four pillars define how safe players really are when using online casinos, sportsbooks, or e-sports platforms: passwords, two-factor authentication, protection against phishing, and privacy hygiene, including how they use a VPN.
Growing Pressure On Gamers’ Digital Security
Recent reports from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre show that Canadians lost more than 638 million Canadian dollars to fraud in 2024, with total losses since 2021 already above 2 billion.
In the United Kingdom, UK Finance data indicates that criminals stole more than 629 million pounds in just the first half of 2025, across more than 2 million confirmed fraud cases, most of them starting in online environments.
In the United States, reports compiled from FBI IC3 data show that phishing remains the most reported type of cybercrime, with nearly 200,000 complaints in 2024. It accounted for more than one-fifth of all incidents, and associated losses were roughly four times higher than the year before.
In Europe, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) hits the same note. Phishing is still the main initial vector of intrusion, responsible for around 60% of the breaches analyzed in 2024-2025.
This backdrop matters for players because online casinos, betting sites, and gaming platforms sit exactly at the intersection of three things criminals want most: money in motion, personal data and detailed records of user behavior.
And as these services become more global, it is increasingly common for players to rely on privacy tools such as virtual private networks. Specialized guides to VPN casinos, like the one put together by Charlie Pearson, highlight this overlap between global access, relative anonymity, and crypto payments on sites licensed in jurisdictions such as Curaçao and Anjouan.
They can also be a starting point on the path to better protection, since a VPN can add extra layers of security, and finding platforms that are VPN friendly is part of staying safer online. Security experts routinely recommend VPNs as a way to shield traffic, hide your IP from prying eyes, and make targeted attacks harder, especially on public Wi-Fi.
Passwords And Password Managers: First Line Between Your Balance And A Scammer
Despite all the progress in biometrics and strong authentication, the weakest link is still usually the password. Studies on data breaches in the UK estimate that the average Brit has had their credentials exposed about five times since 2004, with nearly 370 million accounts compromised and more than 239 million passwords leaked in that country alone.
France, the United States, and Canada also rank among the countries with the highest number of breached accounts per inhabitant. For players, that has direct consequences. A password reused across multiple sites makes it far easier for an old leak at a store or social network to end up in a casino account takeover or a breach of the crypto wallet used for deposits.
Cybersecurity regulators and centers in Canada and the EU recommend long, unique, random passwords for every service, ideally stored in reputable password managers instead of notes apps or screenshots. In practice, that means ditching obvious combinations like birthdate variations, team names or favorite games, and treating a gaming account the same way you would treat a bank account.
In regulated markets such as Ontario and several European jurisdictions, operators are already required to use strong encryption in transit and at rest, but that does not stop attacks based on stolen credentials. The password is still the key that opens the door.
2FA And MFA: The Second Factor That Is No Longer Optional
If the password is the first barrier, two-factor authentication (2FA) is the extra lock many players still ignore. Close to two-thirds of users worldwide already rely on some kind of multi-factor authentication, and roughly 67% of people in the UK see MFA requirements as a sign that companies take data protection seriously.
On the corporate side, studies suggest that in the United States alone, approximately 57% of companies have adopted MFA solutions, and almost half are investing in passwordless methods, driven largely by the need for secure remote access.
In the financial sector, the use of cards and devices that generate one-time passwords (OTP) inside online banking shows how embedded this extra layer has become. More than 74% of financial institutions in the U.S. already use this type of authentication, with tens of millions of customers protecting high-value transactions with a second physical or digital factor.
When you bring that reality into casinos, sportsbooks and e-sports platforms, the message is clear. Whenever an operator offers 2FA via authenticator app, SMS or hardware keys, security specialists say it should be turned on. The extra few seconds at login are insignificant compared with the risk of seeing an entire balance wiped out because someone reused or bought your leaked password on an underground forum.
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Check these websites for free gambling addiction resources.
https://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga
https://www.responsiblegambling.org/