Official website gokhulp.be directs visitors to illegal gambling sites
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10 Sep 2025 •
Reading time: 2 minutes Visitors to the Belgian website gokhulp.be, which provides help with gambling problems, unexpectedly ended up on an external page full of advertisements for illegal French online casinos. The link was at the bottom of the website, next to the reference to French-language help.
Anyone who clicked on joueurs-aide-en-ligne.be was redirected to aide-aux-joueurs.be. This site promotes French online casinos without a Belgian licence. This is in violation of Belgian legislation on games of chance and gambling advertising.
The project manager of gokhulp.be reacted with surprise when she heard about this.
‘This is absolutely not the intention,’ she said upon discovering the error.
Cunning domain hijackers buy old help domain and fill it with gambling advertisements
According to the web developer of Online Psy Hulp, the organisation behind gokhulp.be, this is a mistake. The original French-language help page changed its name some time ago. This freed up the old domain name.
Domain hijackers saw their chance and bought the old address. They then placed advertisements for gambling sites on it. In this way, they tried to mislead users of gokhulp.be and direct them to their own platforms.
‘They are using our reputation to reach their target audience,’ said the developer.
He explained that this type of abuse occurs more frequently when domain names expire and are bought up by individuals with commercial intentions.
The link on gokhulp.be was immediately changed. The rest of the links on the website have also been checked again.
Gokhulp.be aims to protect players from gambling and risky behaviour
Gokhulp.be is an official website that provides information and advice to people with a gambling addiction and those around them. The page helps users recognise risky gambling behaviour and provides access to professional support services.
It also features testimonials from former gambling addicts. The aim of the website is clear: to keep people away from gambling and guide them towards reliable and neutral support.
The fact that the site linked to illegal casinos completely contradicts this mission. The error may have temporarily damaged the trust of visitors. According to the organisation, the error has now been rectified and further measures have been taken to prevent it from happening again.