Córdoba blocks over 2,000 illegal sites with a parental app
Córdoba decided to implement the filter against illegal betting on the phone and on the club's network, not on the internet provider. Lotería de Córdoba has been promoting technological tools to block access to unauthorized platforms from spaces frequented by children, with two developments already in operation, awareness work, and the participation of schools and clubs.
The two tools target different environments. LUCA is designed for schools and clubs, allowing them to block access to illegal betting sites from their own Wi-Fi network. NoVa+ is a free parental control app that allows a mother, father, or guardian to monitor from their phone which sites are being accessed. According to data released by the organization, NoVa+ has loaded over 2,000 illegal betting addresses and records nearly 5,000 blocks each month.
The distribution of these tools is channeled through amateur sports. Lotería signed an agreement with the Unión Cordobesa de Rugby to provide this toolkit to Cordoban clubs, an agreement that also links with Ganá con tu Club, the solidarity raffle through which the organization supports sports entities and helps them finance themselves through official gaming.
The complete strategy seeks to distribute responsibility. The stated objective is to involve families and institutions in the prevention of illegal gambling, with resources that limit access to platforms and with awareness about the risks of betting at early ages. Added to this is a channel for anonymously reporting unlicensed gaming sites, as part of a policy that the organization frames within the reminder that gambling is reserved for individuals over 18 years of age.
The 5,000 monthly blocks are the most useful piece of data from the announcement, not for what they say about the supply but for what they say about the demand. Each of these blocks is an attempt to access an illegal site from a supervised device, so the figure measures how many times someone tried to bet on an unlicensed platform and encountered a barrier, something that no statistics on downed domains can report. The approach also differs from the one that dominates the region, because instead of ordering internet providers to block domains, Córdoba installs the filter on the institution's network and on the family's phone. The advantage is structural, because a device filter does not fail when the brand changes its web address, which is exactly the mechanism with which unlicensed platforms neutralized blocks in Chile, where visits grew 28 percent in one year despite 79 domains being blocked in a single month.
Tags: Córdoba Lottery, illegal gambling, parental control, child protection