Online casino affiliates gaming UK GamStop self-exclusion scheme

Online gambling affiliates have been publicly shamed for pitching offers at individuals searching online for the UK’s GamStop gambling self-exclusion scheme.

On Thursday, a Twitter user who’d signed up with the UK’s GamStop self-exclusion scheme for problem gamblers reported that Google searches for GamStop were returning results from affiliate marketing partners of several sketchy Curacao-licensed online casino operators.

In some of these search results, the affiliates pitched readers on sites that weren’t part of the GamStop program. The affiliates justified this service by claiming that some gamblers may have “made an impulsive decision” to sign up for the self-exclusion program and might now be having second thoughts.

These sites offered UK gamblers ways to “bypass” GamStop and get back to the gambling action, with a somewhat pathetic caveat that gamblers should “promise us that you don’t have any addiction problems.”