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The IDG News Service in the US has reported that, according to cybersecurity vendor, ScanSafe, US employees are continuing to visit sports betting sites in spite of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The Act, recently signed into law by President Bush, prohibits US financial institutions from processing payments to online gambling sites. ScanSafe noted that attempted visits to online sports gambling sites by its US customers increased by 77 percent during the weeks leading up to the Superbowl, the National Footbal League’s championship game held on February 4th. ScanSafe provides a Web-blocking service to large businesses and monitors six billion Web requests each month. The UIGEA was signed into law last October and processing regulations for financial institutions are due out in mid-July. However, some financial institutions have already begun keeping the online gambling sites at arm’s length and the customers of these sites have been forewarned. Last Wednesday, PokerRoom.com told its US customers to cash out:"The remaining companies that process cashouts from PokerRoom.com to our players in the United States have contacted us to say that in the near future they will no longer facilitate these transactions," said a message on PokerRoom's home page. "As such, we would advise all American players who have not cashed out already to do so immediately." The UIGEA was tacked onto popular legislation designed to increase port security in the US so it passed approval easily. Dan Nadir, vice president for product strategy at ScanSafe said that the legislation has had no impact whatsoever on the number of people visiting online gambling sites. As for the people actually completing bets, ScanSafe doesn’t have data, as it doesn’t track this activity. "We suspected [the law] wouldn't have much of an impact," Nadir said. Adding, “some gambling sites will develop alternative payment mechanisms”. ScanSafe didn't provide the actual number of visits to gambling sites during the last week, but did say that gambling represented about 3.4 percent of the content it blocked for clients in 2006. By comparison, 15.1 percent of the blocked content was chat or instant messaging, 14.6 percent was advertising, 7.2 percent was e-mail, and 3.9 percent was pornography. Nadir said that one of the more common sites visited was Bodog.com, the sports betting site. Approximately 53% of the visits to gambling sites by US customers that ScanSafe observed were to sports betting sites rather than online casinos or online lotteries. Bodog has not yet responded to an e-mail that asked whether or not its business had been negatively affected by the U.S. law. ScanSafe reports that about 84% of its customers blocked employee access to gambling sites. Businesses block access to these cites for several reasons including concern that online gambling sites aren’t safe and to keep employees from playing on company time. Posted on: February 15, 2007
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