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“You have to follow that chain,” Madsen says. In some cases, that chain can involve multiple layers. “A site might redirect ten times before reaching the actual destination.”
Madsen describes Trace2Trace as “a large search engine that continuously crawls websites”.
AI is used, but only towards the end of the process. First, the system gathers objective indicators; AI is then used to assess the overall pattern and probability of a connection. “We only provide evidence-based findings,” Madsen says. “We don’t say that something is a mirror site because we suspect it is. It is only reported when we are 100% confident there is a match.”
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Data from the Rede em Jogo project, by CondadoLab at PUC-Rio, revealed that 84% of the betting operators most recommended on Instagram are illegal in Brazil.
The research, published by The Intercept Brasil on Monday, analysed more than 55,000 Instagram accounts and cross-referenced the results with the official list of authorised operators from the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA).
According to the survey, the problem arises when a user follows a single account related to betting. The platform’s recommendation system then starts showing other profiles in the same segment, including betting sites, influencers and specialised pages.
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In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Keurmerk Verantwoorde Affiliates (KVA), the Dutch casino affiliate quality mark, voiced concerns about the role of Google search in directing Dutch consumers towards illegal online gambling sites.
The group highlighted potential risks posed by Google’s organic search features beyond paid advertising, which include autocomplete and suggested queries.
Using data collected primarily through Chrome’s incognito mode to exclude personalised search histories, the KVA identified several autocomplete and pre-fill search queries that directly suggested illegal gambling platforms to users.
