Thousands of illegal online gambling domains uncovered by Russian regulator

The Russian telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor has reported that the number of illegal websites contravening a variety of Russian laws it has uncovered this year has soared three-fold over 2015 at 87,000…and 15,900 of them were online gambling oriented.

The regulator claims some success in taking action, with 52,000 successfully warned off and a further 34,500 removed by Internet service providers.

The authorities took action against the illegal online gambling sites, and managed to successfully block 12,561 of them. Over 6,500 of these were online casino sites, which along with online poker sites are expressly forbidden by Russian law.

127,000 reports of illegal and inappropriate Web content in various categories were received from the Russian public by Roskomnadzor, a 30 percent increase on the same period last year…but around 40 percent of these did not lead to official action after being considered by the regulator.

The top categories complained about were drugs and pornography, with online gambling in third place.