Many Brits now feel that their digital life has become an infinite loop of paperwork (e.g., for bank accounts, rental agreements, jobs, NHS registration, local council registration, etc.) and continuously have to submit documents (proof of residency, photographs of themselves holding a passport, etc.) with every step.
The same patterns in the gaming industry also apply to our leisure time, especially in the case of our increasing reliance on various forms of online gambling; as such, the majority of people do not exhibit the same level of patience that they did previously.
In fact, according to the Gambling Commission, 49 percent of the adult population within the United Kingdom have participated in some form of gambling, which would have included lotteries (Lotto) plus other options that were delivered through digital services.
Privacy: What This Means for People Playing From the UK
Officially, the identity and age checks required by the Gambling Commission are meant to protect players. Licensed operators in the UK have to confirm who the customer is before they can gamble with real money or, in some cases, even before they can access free versions of products that look like real-money games.
Those who have played in other countries might be used to a more integrated system of electronic checks back home, where banks and data sharing play a strong role, whereas the British experience can feel more fragmented and intrusive. Instead of a centralized ecosystem, each gambling site asks for its own set of uploads.
Passport, proof of address, bank statements, selfies in different poses. That is why comparisons of no verification casino sites are gaining traction, especially among people who already live in this constant back and forth with documents.
Guides that pull together these rankings of casinos, like the one by Darragh Harbinson, can be very useful for anyone searching for lightning-fast sign-ups and withdrawals with fewer visible checks.
The fatigue of having to prove your identity all the time, combined with the fear of seeing that data exposed in a future breach, attracts a large audience.
More than 70 percent of online casino players in the UK list fast withdrawals as a priority, but they also value KYC processes that are shorter or almost invisible.
If work and everyday bureaucracy are already tightly controlled, it makes sense that in their free time, any promise of less paperwork feels immediately attractive.
One thing many in the UK do not realize is that behind all this data collection sits a relatively solid regulatory framework, both in the UK and in the European Union, designed to balance security, fraud prevention and the protection of personal data.
And Where Does That Data Go? UK GDPR, EU GDPR and Expats
After Brexit, the UK introduced its own version of GDPR, known as the UK GDPR, which works together with the Data Protection Act 2018. In practice, the core principles (data minimization, transparency, specific purpose, rights of access and erasure, and so on) remain very similar to the EU’s GDPR.
The European Commission granted the UK an adequacy decision, recognizing that the British data protection regime is essentially equivalent to that of the EU. This allows data to flow between the EU and the UK without extra mechanisms such as standard contractual clauses, at least until December 2025, when the adequacy decision is due for review.
This means that if an operator is licensed in the UK, it is subject to the UK GDPR and oversight from the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office), which sets rules on transparency, security and data minimization.
If the operator is licensed in an EU country, the European GDPR applies, with very similar obligations. The iGaming sector even has its own specific code of conduct on personal data processing for online operators.
In both cases, players have clear rights. Access to their data, correction, requests for erasure where possible, limits on processing and data portability.
So even if the experience feels like an overreaction in terms of document requests, the law still imposes boundaries on what can be collected, for how long and for what purpose.
