Internet Security Blog - Hackology

How to Play Online games and Stay Safe

Trend of online games has grown since the internet has taken over our lives, as the industry grows, need for secure online gaming and privacy protection became an important aspect. Purchasing games online for the kids or a casino game for yourself comes with equal security hazards in the cyber world. Online Payment for Apps and Games is indeed a very convenient thing to do, but you do it at the risk of sharing personal information without actually knowing anything about your seller or game provider.

As online casino games are most secured gaming websites on the internet nowadays, we reviewed Top Online Casinos and went through their payment and gaming processes to ensure everything is perfect and as per security measures. But not all online platforms at times ensure such rigid security measures and at such times end users need to ensure their privacy and security. Keep reading to learn how to play online games and stay safe.

Online Games and Security Tips

We have divided various tips into sections for easy understanding, ofcourse you can skip any if you are already familiar with our techniques and you can share some of your tips with us in comments.

Cyber Identity for Gaming

Do you go to a mall with your name, date and place of birth flashed on your shirt? No, me neither. But people forget that while playing online games and they register their in-game nicknames which reveal a lot, for instance yesterday while playing DoTA2 I found a user named “2002FunGalFlorida”, just by reading this name I can tell that its someone from Florida born in 2002 and having a female gender, do not take this information as harmless as Social Engineers will die for such goldmine of information.

Graph showing Social Engineering attempts for Q1 2017

Never include your personal identifying information which would allow another online gamer to locate you physically.  While majority of all online gamers are actually there for the gaming part, there is a small minority whose prime reason to be in the game is to identify and target individuals for their own nefarious purpose.

Choosing a Trusted platform

In real life we always ask for others opinion before buying something or before making a decision. Same rule applies while selecting our service which we will be using to play online. To choose any gaming website or online platform first we need to read reviews about them. Internet is full of experts and their reviews matter a lot. Easiest way to find trusted and authentic reviews for an online service is:

  1. Search this specific dork in Google: “your game name or website name” + “review
  2. Select website coming first on the list and read other reviews on their site as well to determine if the review site is legit.
  3. Don’t make your decision based on just one website’s review, we recommend checking 3-5 different websites to get a better image.
  4. After confirming from the above method, go to everyone’s favorite “The Facebook”, yes you read it right, Facebook groups are the best place to find unbiased opinion. Search for your favourite game or website and select the group tab.
  5. Join the largest group with better privacy, the most private group with most active members will be authentic and clean.
  6. Post the website URL or game name and ask for reviews, or use the search option to read old related posts.

Secure & Insecure Connections

After opting for any gaming website, we recommend checking if it has valid SSL certificate installed. SSL is a protection seal and it ensures 128-bit encryption, which means your data transmits in an encrypted form between two parties and no other malicious user can read or access it by doing any forms of MITM Attacks. Secure connections are important here as you will be using these online gaming websites to carry out payments therefore it is mandatory that you ALWAYS opt for a service with SSL enabled. You can read about type of encryption by clicking the Green seal in address bar.

Secure Payments and Recommendation

Some of the top online gaming websites,online casinos and e-payment platforms are monitored by one of the most strict and well known online gaming regulation and assurance body “eCOGRA”. eCOGRA’s job is to go through online gaming platforms which deal with financial transactions and ensure if they use legit methods to keep gamers safe, if a site or casino is approved by eCOGRA which can be seen on any website by clicking their Seal, if so it is a green signal for you to go ahead and play confidently.

 

Always keep up with latest technology so you may stay safe and secure while playing online games. We will keep this article updated with latest trends. To help the community and make the world more safe place, we encourage you to comment and let us know your thoughts and solutions.

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