Bangladesh blocks 1,331 gambling, betting and porn portals

Bangladesh has shut 1,331 online portals linked to gambling, betting and pornography over the past six months, the Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser for the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, said on Tuesday (October 21). 

He spoke after a stakeholder meeting at the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) headquarters in Agargaon, which brought together officials from the Posts, Telecommunications and ICT Ministry, BTRC, Bangladesh Bank, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, mobile operators and mobile financial service (MFS) providers.

According to participants, online gambling activity has continued to rise across websites, mobile applications and social media, posing risks to young people and facilitating the outflow of funds abroad.

Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb said that, with support from the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) and BTRC, authorities have also shut down 4,820 MFS accounts since May this year and blocked 1,331 portals. 

He added that investigators are compiling a list of accounts used for gambling transactions and that any portals running gambling advertisements will be taken down. 

He noted that offenders often open multiple substitute sites after one is blocked and shift to app-based operations when MFS accounts are closed. 

Beyond intensified law-enforcement action, he urged mobile operators to curb pop-up advertising “at the packet core,” and said traffic classifiers should be configured to block such content. 

MFS providers, he added, should deploy active crawlers to detect and disrupt gambling and betting flows. Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb also said the National Equipment Identity Register (NEIR) would be launched in November. 

Shish Haider Chowdhury, Secretary of the ICT Division, stated that BTRC and the National Cyber Security Agency are collaborating to curb online gambling, emphasizing the need to combine public awareness with technology-led prevention. 

Major General Md Emdad-ul-Bari (retd), the BTRC chairman, said that once NEIR is active, users will need to register when swapping SIMs on a device, a step he said would deter crime. 

He also encouraged MFS providers to further reduce fraud by adding repeated verification steps within their apps. He called for sustained cooperation and mutual respect among security and technology teams across agencies. 

Mobile operators told the meeting they are enhancing their capacity to block gambling, pornography and betting sites with assistance from the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre (NTMC), and said many platforms had already been taken down. 

Because gambling sites are often highly secured and operate under multiple names, they urged a multilayered response involving BTRC, the Election Commission, Bangladesh Bank, handset manufacturers and MFS providers. 

Representatives of the BFIU said 58,000 MFS numbers had already been blocked and that work was underway to assign unique identification numbers to customers with accounts across MFS, banks, and other financial institutions. 

They also recommended a joint BTRC–Bangladesh Bank platform to verify MFS accounts by matching NID and SIM data. 

An NTMC representative stated that the centre is supplying data to all stakeholders and has already blocked 123 gambling apps, along with numerous links and URLs. They added that the Cyber Security Act can be used to prevent gambling advertisements in the media. 

The Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) suggested introducing an IMEI blacklist so that, when a blacklisted SIM is activated, cell towers immediately alert the relevant operator. 

National Security Intelligence (NSI) officials stated that domestic groups, as well as networks based in Dubai and Malaysia, are involved in online offenses. They described how some operators take women overseas to run call centres promoting gambling and betting, and urged both stronger content-detection capabilities by mobile and ISP operators and broader public awareness efforts.

The CID Cyber Police Center stated that in the last two months, it had identified more than 2,000 SIMs involved in online betting, along with 600 websites and 50 apps used for gambling—many of which were operated from outside Bangladesh.

Mr Taiyeb said the authorities will soon take more effective measures against online gambling in coordination with policy-making and technical teams across agencies, including the Election Commission, to strengthen enforcement.