GeoComply has published its risk number data from the first 12 months of the regulated Ontario igaming and online sports betting market, reporting 3.3 million global ‘spoofing’ attempts.

These efforts at accessing Ontario operators came from several different continents, including Europe, Africa and South America.

Additionally, over 744,000 users attempted to log in 19.9 million times to Ontario operators during the market’s first year, with 54,000 users hailing from within the US who attempted to log in 305,000 times.

Pertinently, GeoComply’s risk data for Ontario operators shows the province is in line with similarly-sized US states that have regulated igaming and/or online sports betting.

Danny DiRienzo, Director of Risk Services at GeoComply, explained: “Ontario is such a large market and the opening of any market results in bonus offerings attracting fraudsters.

“This, coupled with the traditional gray market operations in Canada, resulted in experienced fraudsters hunting bonuses from day one, as anyone with a set of stolen identities could collect bonuses from several operators.

“GeoComply remains vigilant alongside our operator partners. During the last 90 days, a third of GeoComply’s fraud investigations have involved Ontario operators, despite Ontario accounting for far less than a third of our overall traffic.

“The investigations have affected most Ontario operators, so fraudsters are targeting almost everybody.”

GeoComply expanded its Canadian footprint with a new office in downtown Toronto last November, and describes itself as ‘the leading provider of geolocation and anti-fraud services to Ontario’s licensed igaming and online sports betting operators’.

According to the company’s data, GeoComply detected 1,045 fraud rings affecting multiple operators over the past year, and prevented over 219,000 devices from gambling for fraud reasons.

DiRienzo added: “Online fraud is not uniquely a sports betting or igaming problem. Recent data shows that cybercrimes were up 50 per cent in 2022 across all forms of e-commerce.

“However, our industry’s high standards of compliance put us in a strong position to combat it. Because every bettor must verify their location, we have the data to stop fraud before it gets a foothold.”