In the United States, legal online casinos, betting sites, and gambling apps are already part of many people’s digital routine. The online gambling sector handled around $12.68 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach nearly $13.9 billion in 2025, with projections of close to 10 percent annual growth through the end of the decade.

In parallel, the regulated iGaming segment in just a handful of states has already passed $8.4 billion in annual revenue, with growth of almost 30 percent in a single year. So it is no surprise that bonus notifications, free spin offers, and welcome packages with extra cash are popping up on screens all the time.

More and more, that tap to activate happens away from home. On hotel networks, airport Wi-Fi, coffee shop connections, college campuses, or even inside a mall. For many casual players, opening a casino app on hotel Wi-Fi feels as automatic as checking email.

A flashy banner promising free spins or a generous boost on the first deposit is often enough to make someone tap claim without thinking too much about who else is on that same network. Online casino bonuses are designed to be frictionless.

One tap to join, another to deposit. That fluidity is great for the experience, but terrible when it means sending logins, card details, and KYC documents over an open connection. This is exactly where a VPN comes in.

It does not change the bonus terms or turn a weak offer into a good one, but it encrypts the traffic around signup, identity verification, and payment so that the hunt for extra value does not turn into an invitation for cybercriminals.

The Appeal Of Casino Promotions In A Billion-Dollar Market

Competition between operators in the US is intense. Reports from the American Gaming Association show that in 2024, the combination of online sports betting and iGaming already accounted for almost one-third of total commercial gaming revenue, with about $6 billion generated in the third quarter of 2025 alone.

As more money flows through the system, the offers used to attract and retain players become more aggressive. Users are hit with emails, push notifications, and promo pop-ups all the time. One hundred or 200 percent deposit matches, free spin packages, limited-time cashback, slot tournaments, and missions with extra rewards.

In states with regulated iGaming, virtually every major operator offers some kind of welcome bonus or recurring promotion. The average player now expects that as part of the onboarding experience. Before deciding where to open an account, many people spend time comparing bonus lists, brand reputation, and rollover rules.

Rankings and guides to online casino promotions, such as Lloyd Mackenzie’s, help players understand which offers look more competitive, which ones focus on free spins, which are centered on deposits, and which come with fewer restrictions on withdrawals or eligible games.

Instead of acting as standalone advertising, these comparisons become a starting point for decisions based on real, useful information. The problem is that when people review and activate these promos on public networks, the focus usually stays on what they can win and almost never on how exposed their data may be when they unlock that benefit.

What Really Happens When You Tap Claim On Public Wi-Fi

Hotel, airport, or coffee shop Wi-Fi sounds like a simple convenience. In practice, a lot is happening in the background. In short, open networks or ones protected only by simple passwords shared with hundreds of strangers are constant targets for man-in-the-middle attacks and for scams using evil twin networks.

Fake hotspots mimic the name of the real Wi-Fi to capture users’ traffic. When a player taps to activate a promotion in that kind of environment, they log into their casino account, which exposes their username and password if the connection is compromised. Next, they usually need to enter payment details, such as a credit card, bank account, or digital wallet.

In many jurisdictions, especially in regulated casinos, there is also an identity verification step that requires uploading a photo ID, a selfie, and proof of address. Each of these steps generates sensitive traffic that travels over the same shared network, often with no protection beyond HTTPS.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the connection, cybercriminals are working in a risk landscape that keeps getting bigger. An FBI report shows that the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received about 859,000 cybercrime complaints in 2024, with reported losses exceeding $16 billion.

That is a 33 percent increase compared to the previous year. The most common schemes involve phishing, theft of personal data, and hijacking of online accounts, exactly the type of information that is worth a lot of money on the dark market.

When you combine a multibillion-dollar volume of online casino transactions with that environment of unsecured Wi-Fi, the equation becomes clear. Rushing to grab a bonus can put your bankroll, banking details, identity, and entire online login history in the same vulnerable basket.

What A VPN Actually Does For You When You Activate A Promotion

This is where a modern VPN plays a central role. A service like this creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN server, scrambling the traffic so that even if someone is snooping on the same public network, all they see is unreadable data.

The protection covers not only websites, but also apps running in the background, including banking apps, digital wallets, and gambling platforms. In practice, this means that your casino login, card number entry, and document uploads travel through an encrypted end-to-end channel, even on hotel or airport Wi-Fi.

Your real IP address is masked, which makes tracking harder for bad actors and reduces the chance of exposing your location and home network directly. Extra features such as DNS leak protection and a kill switch help prevent your traffic from suddenly flowing uncovered over the public network if the connection to the VPN server drops for a moment.