Kansspelautoriteit, the Dutch gambling authority, has made improvements to its self-exclusion service – the Central Register for the Exclusion of Games of Chance – to make it easier for those suffering from gambling harm to exclude themselves.
KSA has stated that on the renewed Cruks website – cruksregister.nl – it is now easier for users to set up a gambling exclusion period for a minimum of six months.
As part of the improvements, the exclusion period can be applied to both land-based properties and online brands and can be for a longer period than half a year.
Players that are self-excluded from gambling for longer than six months can unsubscribe once that period is up, but now an eight-day reflection period has been introduced to discourage impulsive unsubscribing. Previously, unsubscribing could be completed with a touch of a button.
Users that enter the eight-day reflection period will still not be able to gamble.
The communication on Cruks has been updated as well to replace the term ‘play pause’ with ‘gambling stop’ in line with self-exclusion research.
Established by the gambling authority in October 2021, more than 38,000 registrations have taken place on Cruks. Land-based and online operators with a Dutch licence must use the service to check if a user is registered and stop those that have excluded themselves from gambling.