Russia Increases Efforts to Restrict Foreign Gambling Sites
by Glenn Baird - August 29, 2018
In a push to prevent Russian gamblers playing at online casinos based outside of the country, the nation’s banks, internet and phone companies are applying new, more stringent measures.
One of the country’s leading telecom operators, Roskomnadzor informed Russia’s internet providers that a new domain-blocking system will be put into place from the beginning of October that will allow Roskomnadzor to add sites to an existing register of forbidden domains.
The key measure is known as Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which replaces the IPv4 protocol. This new protocol means that it will be much more difficult for international gambling sites to be accessed from inside Russia.
IPv6 has been tested successfully in the Moscow area and will now be rolled out across the entire country.
Since the protocol was introduced in Moscow, roughly 3300 gambling sites have been banned for people within that area.
Roskomnadzor claim that they are responding to a national outcry as over 200 thousand complaints have been made to them regarding access to unlawful sites, nearly 150 thousand of which related to gambling sites.
Banks have also been given the power to block any transactions that they deem to be unlawful, meaning that if Russians do manage to get onto gambling sites there’s no guarantee they’ll be making any money whilst they are there.