Your SSN is needed to verify your account at a licensed US sportsbook. This is a part of registration that is mandated by law, and you cannot skip it otherwise your account will not be fully registered. For the uninitiated or beginners, it may feel dangerous to share your mailing address, date of birth, and SSN.
But, rest assured, it is better if your chosen sportsbook asks for the last 4 digits of your SSN. Any sportsbook that requires your SSN is a fully legitimate site that has licensure in the US. Here, we will look into how these laws work, and what sportsbooks do with your SSN.
Why Sportsbooks Need Your SSN and Other Personal Information
Submitting your SSN is required for identity verification, a procedure that is mandated by US law. This is necessary at US sportsbooks to ensure that you are eligible to use the sports betting products and that there is no fraud. It also serves another crucial purpose – gambling taxation. In the US, gamblers must pay tax on their winnings, comprising of Federal Tax and any state gambling taxes.
Reasons for Requiring Your SSN
Eligibility to gamble
For gambling taxation
Ensure there is no money laundering or fraud
To avoid any fraud or underage gamblers
Each state has its own Governmental Agencies that regulate sports betting, such as The Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJ), The Department of Consumer Protection Gaming Division (CT), or the State Gaming Commission (NY).
All of these departments are responsible for making gambling laws and governing them in their respective jurisdictions. Sports betting was legalized on a federal level in 2018 when the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was repealed. Though each state reserves the right to govern gambling within its borders as it sees fit, any area where gambling is legal must follow the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.
This act requires all financial institutions, including online sportsbooks or casinos, to assist the US government in detecting fraud and preventing money laundering. Your SSN is needed to meet these requirements and makes it impossible for anyone to embezzle money or evade tax by hiding their tracks through online sports betting platforms. Basically put, you must be fully transparent where your finances are concerned, and by pinning an account to an SSN number, the US government can detect any illegal money laundering or embezzlement at sports betting sites.
How Many Digits of Your SSN Are Needed
Sportsbooks and betting apps do not need your full SSN, the last 4 digits are enough to verify your identity. After you have already submitted your full name, home address, and date of birth, sportsbooks only need the last 4 digits of your SSN to verify you. The sportsbook operators will then run a quick test with the US government records department, to see if your information matches their records. By using your SSN and personal information, verification is a lot quicker than in other countries, where you may be asked for government-issued photo IDs.
Instead of waiting up to 72 hours, your account may take just a handful of hours, if that, to become verified – courtesy of your SSN and personal information.
Verification Taking Too Long or SSN Fails to Verify
Verification is a must to complete your account registration, but in rare cases, this procedure may be delayed or bounce back entirely, as the information you submitted does not match the US public records. It can be one of 4 things – your name, date of birth, address, or your SSN. All it takes is for one of those to be incorrect for your verification to be delayed or rejected.
Use your legal name, not any nickname or abbreviations (unless your official name is say, “Rob” and not “Robert”). Also, if your name is hyphenated (double-barreled, such as Mary-Ann), or has a prefix/suffix (Jr. or Sr.), please enter the name exactly as it appears on your SSN card.
Your date of birth should be fine so long as you enter it in the US format: mm-dd-yyyy (month/date/year), as opposed to the UK format (day-month-year), the standard used across Europe (dd-mm-yyyy), or the Japanese date format (yy/mm/dd).
The most likely source of your problems is generally home addresses. If your SSN fails to verify, it is usually because you are using an old address, or you use a new address that is not officially recognized (because you don’t have any documentation to prove it). Especially if you have moved recently or are living in a rental and have another home listed as your official residence. It is best to enter the home address listed on your ID card or driver’s license. Don’t enter a temporary address or submit your parent’s address (unless that is your official residence), be sure to enter the address exactly as it appears in your driving license or any other ID documents.
Troubleshooting Common Verification Errors
Enter your full name (hyphens, prefix/suffixes, no abbreviations)
Use the correct format for DOB: mm-dd-yyyy
Submit your official address (no rentals, temporary addresses, etc)
Alternative Verification Methods
In some cases, if the sportsbook cannot verify your identity using the given information, you may be asked to use an alternative verification method. Generally, if this is the case, licensed sportsbooks will ask you to upload a government-issued photo ID. This step also verifies your identity, but it takes longer to check, and therefore you will have to wait for more time before your account becomes verified.
Government-issued photo IDs include driver’s licenses, passports and passport cards, or ID cards. Social Security Numbers are the primary source of verifying accounts, and Passports or Passport Cards are non-compulsory, and a lot of US residents don’t have them. Driver’s licenses are not issued by the federal government, but by state authorities, which makes it much longer for sportsbooks to verify these independently.
Need for Customer Support
If you are unsure about whether or not you are eligible to sign up, or are having repeated issues with your verification, then reach out to customer support immediately. Where support is concerned, there is a gulf of difference in the quality you get at average betting sites and the top establishments.
US sportsbooks tend to have phone support, something that is rarely offered at international sites or offshore betting sites. As far as live chats are concerned, the best sites may use chat bots, but only to figure out the nature of your query, and from there they will swiftly connect you to an agent. The best sites have you fully covered where support is concerned. At average betting sites, you may not even be able to use the live chat, and have to refer to email correspondence, which takes days to solve your problem.
Who is Eligible to Sign Up at Sportsbooks
Anyone who is of legal gambling age, not on any gambling self-exclusion register or suspended from gambling, and within a state where sports betting is legal can sign up at a sportsbook. It is part of the Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures that are a must for all legitimate betting apps and sites.
When you sign up, you need to accept the Terms and Conditions, that state you are eligible to gamble on sports and recognize the conditions for using the platforms. The sportsbook has the right to suspend or ban any users who they suspect of fraud, or are abusing any of the sports betting products. Let’s dive a little further into some of the most important clauses of sportsbook Terms and Conditions.
Verifying Your Age
Your SSN is needed to verify that you are of legal gambling age. The majority of states set the minimum legal age to gamble on sports at 21+, but several states have set the legal sports betting age down to 18+.
- Washington DC 18+
- Rhode Island 18+
- Wyoming 18+
- Kentucky 18+
- New Hampshire 18+
However, it is important to note that the legal age for gambling is not the same as the legal age for online sports betting. Generally, the age for gambling may be set at 18+ for other gambling products outside sports betting. Most commonly, these include:
- Lottery
- Horse race betting
- DFS (fantasy sports products)
- Bingo/charitable gambling
Fraud Detection/Account Duplication
A sportsbook reserves the right to reject your registration. It is very rare, but generally, this occurs when someone is using a fake SSN or trying to create an account tied to a fake identity. Sportsbooks cannot be used for money laundering purposes, not just for the safety of the sportsbook, but also to ensure that the users are safe from any fraudulent schemes.
A more common occurrence is duplicated accounts. Say you had an account at a US sportsbook, deactivated it, and want to return. Instead of signing up from scratch, you have to reach out to the sportsbook and inform them that you want to rejoin the platform.
Some players may try to make new accounts to get the most out of any welcome offers or newcomer bonuses. This is illegal, and creating duplicate accounts to abuse bonuses is a direct breach of the terms and conditions. Another example of which is abusing the Refer A Friend bonus programs. It is alright to refer friends and claim the bonuses, so long as they meet the qualifying requirements. Your friends don’t need to necessarily play beyond the bonus – just doing enough to redeem the bonus is enough.
But the following are considered to be abuses of refer a friend bonuses:
- Referring household members or close family (at most sportsbooks)
- Spamming friend referral links via social media, email, or any other channels
- Creating fake accounts to redeem friend referral bonuses
Your Physical Location
This is different from your home address. You may reside in New Jersey, but sign up to a sportsbook while physically located in, say, New York. This is perfectly fine, as you are within New York – a legal sports betting state – at the time of your registration. When you make your account, be sure to enter your real address in NJ, and not the temporary residence in NY (such as a hotel, Airbnb, house of a friend/family, and so on).
Let’s say you are based in a state where sports betting is illegal, and it may never pass a sports betting bill, such as Utah. If you travel to the following neighboring states: Colorado, Nevada or Arizona, you can sign up to an online sports betting platform. You must give your Utah home address to verify your account, and your account will be fully verified.
You are allowed to gamble at that sports betting site while you are in the legal sports betting state (CO, NV, AZ, and more), but when you go back to Utah, you are not allowed to open your sports betting account. Don’t try to use a VPN to access it, as this will flag up in the system and the sportsbook may suspend your account. Sportsbooks use geolocation trackers to see where sports bettors use their services, and if you use a cloaking device such as a VPN, operators will spot your activity immediately. And it can result in serious repercussions.
Don’t use your sports betting account when you are in a state where sports betting has not been legalized. Only open the account again when you re-enter a state where sports betting is legal. Plus, be mindful that not all sportsbooks operate in every state where sports betting is legal. There are some betting platforms with limited state availability, such as bet365. The following betting sites are available in the majority of states that have legal sports betting.
FanDuel legal sports betting states
DraftKings legal sports betting states
BetMGM legal sports betting states
How Your SSN and Information is Protected
Sports betting sites and apps are mandated by law to use data protection software and protocols. To use a sports betting site, you will need to submit lots of personal data, from the last 4 digits of your SSN to your preferred banking gateways. All of this information is kept safe under lock and key using bank-level security measures, including firewalls, data encryption, and authorization protocols.
Which US Sportsbooks Don’t Need SSN
The legitimate online sportsbooks in the USA all require your SSN when signing up, but there are alternatives if you are unwilling to share that information. And no, we don’t mean using a dodgy offshore betting site or an unregistered sportsbook. No, the answer could simply lie in US social sportsbooks.
These are betting sites and apps that provide either conventional sports betting or DFS products, and you don’t need to spend a cent to play them. Of course, they are not strictly the same as real money US sportsbooks, you will either be staking your bets using virtual in-platform currencies, or playing fantasy sports games.
And there is a big distinction to be made between those two as well, they are very different, an example of which we detailed in our comparison of PrizePicks vs DraftKings. If you want to try your hand at daily fantasy sports games, be sure to check out our list for the best US DFS sites and apps.
The most similar to a real money sportsbook are Fliff, Rebet, Sportzino and Thrillzz. But you can always try something new and try a DFS app or social sportsbook with various Pick’Em games and leaderboard contests. There are plenty of social sportsbooks and DFS apps that don’t require your SSN. Here are some of the leading alternative sportsbooks in the USA.
Gambling Taxation in the US
You will have to pay taxes on your sports betting winnings if the returns exceed $600, or the payout was over 300x the amount you bet (odds @ +29,900). Legal sportsbooks will provide you with Form W-2G that you must fill out and submit before January 31 (tax declaration deadline for Payers of Form W-2).
Federal Tax Threshold – $600 for Sports Betting
The federal tax ranges from 10% to around 37%, depending on your marital status, salary bracket, and how much you win from sports betting. If you win over $5,000, your sportsbook may withhold up to 24% of your winning for federal income tax. When filing your tax return, you will need to report your winning under the “Gambling Income” bracket on Form 1040.
Your losses are also tax deductible, but you can only deduct up to the amount that you declare as winnings. You cannot simply bet and lose $100, and then pay off your tax with the losses. Unless that is, you have won $100 as well, in which case you can declare up to $100 in losses.
Each state has its own gambling tax, independent of the federal taxes. The state tax can vary greatly, and there may also be threshold limits that are excluded from taxation. You can use our free gambling tax calculator to get an idea of how much tax you have to pay on your winnings. In any case, we would suggest you to get in touch with an accountant or financial advisor to handle your tax returns, to ensure there are no mistakes that can lead to penalties or fines.
In some cases, sportsbooks may offer personal financial advisors, and even annuity payments for big wins – a payment plan that allows you to spread out big payouts into payments, and work it out in a favorable way in regard to taxation. But these options are only offered to VIP members or high stakes bettors, and not to the everyday sports bettor.
Best Licensed US Sportsbooks
A licensed sportsbook is the best guarantee that your money is safe, and that you will receive your winnings. The black market for sports betting is large in the US, but it is risky as they are not regulated in the US, and therefore you cannot turn to any local authorities should you have any disputes. The US government and state agencies work to ban these establishments, and there have been several major crackdowns, like the 2011 US vs Scheinburg incident when the government shut down 3 major poker sites.
It is best to avoid these sites and stick to US sportsbooks that operate under the full extent of the law. After testing and reviewing countless betting sites, we found that the following operators provide the best gambling products.
Of course, if you don’t live in a state where sports betting has been legalized, you are not completely devoid of options. Fortunately, DFS, fantasy sports apps, and social sportsbooks are legal in the majority of US states – including ones where sports betting bills have not been passed. Here are some of the top social sportsbooks in the US, and if you need any more information on their services, be sure to check out our reviews.
