Company Releases New Software for Parental Internet Casino Blocks

A Canadian company has released new software which it says efficiently allows parents to prevent their children from accessing Internet casinos.

A new line of software designed to allow individual users to prevent children from visiting Internet casino sites has been developed by the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation. The Canadian company announced its release of BetStopper, which worried parents can use to censor gambling websites from underage surfers.

Marie Mullaly, a spokesman for Nova Scotia Gaming, said the product had been tested by 250 families and found to be efficient and highly effective. The program, she noted, finds gaming language in both URLs and website content.

"It has a heightened or enhanced level of intelligence that allows it to have a 98 per cent rate of blocking sites," she said. Mullaly says the program is the first to achieve such levels of performance.

Mullaly also pointed out the importance of blocking free gambling sites that entice children to learn gaming procedures without betting. Parents using the product will find the introduction sites barred as well as the money sites to which they lead.

The company said statistics show adolescent males having a high rate of gambling activity, especially involving sports betting. In a survey done the by gaming company, almost one in five eighteen-year-olds admitted having gambled at Internet casinos.

Online gaming experts say any form of voluntary block or exclusion is far preferable to government-enforced censorship of the Internet.

Nova Scotia Gaming plans to give out free copies of BetStopper at the We Love Our Children Expo in Halifax this weekend.