Indonesia’s fight against illegal online gambling has expanded sharply over the past year. What began mainly as an effort to block gambling websites and remove online platforms has now grown into a wider crackdown involving financial intelligence agencies, social media monitoring, visa checks and public warnings about minors being exposed to gambling content online.
The wider crackdown demonstrates how Indonesian authorities are growing more worried about the way online gambling networks continue to use digital platforms, payment methods, and cross-border operations. Despite thousands of blocked websites, frozen bank accounts and coordinated raids, online gambling networks continue operating across Indonesia’s digital ecosystem.
Earlier this May, concerns over minors accessing online gambling platforms added further urgency to the crackdown after Indonesian officials revealed that nearly 200,000 minors had been exposed to gambling-related content and activities online. Authorities warned that online gambling networks were increasingly reaching children and teenagers through social media platforms, online games and digital advertising, prompting calls for stronger digital literacy, tighter supervision and wider child protection measures.
The government’s warnings highlighted rising concerns over the growing accessibility of online gambling content among younger users through digital platforms and online channels.
A 2025 academic study also warned that gambling-related promotional content on Indonesian social media platforms was becoming increasingly difficult to detect. In the study A Deep Learning and AutoML-Based Multimodal Text Extraction Framework for Detecting Online Gambling Advertisements in Indonesian Social Media, researchers Ari Muzakir, Usman Ependi and Suyanto of Bina Darma University found that online gambling advertisements often relied on multilingual text, visual content and coded promotional language designed to evade automated moderation systems.
Enforcement expands beyond gambling websites
Indonesia has reviewed its visa-free entry policy amid concerns over foreign nationals using short-term permits to support online gambling and cyber fraud operations. The move came after authorities arrested more than 300 foreign nationals linked to an alleged online gambling operation, with officials stating that some operators had shifted activities into Indonesia following crackdowns elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
At the same time, Indonesia’s Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) stated that online gambling activity continued to persist as demand remained high despite ongoing crackdowns.
During a financial literacy discussion, PPATK speaker Fiqi stated: “This is the same as the law of economics. Where there is demand, there will be supply. So online gambling will continue to exist as long as there is demand.” Officials also warned that operators continued searching for loopholes allowing gambling systems to remain active despite enforcement pressure.
Government concern widens across digital platforms
By tightening control over gambling-related content on social media and tackling issues associated to gambling addiction, Indonesia intensified its campaign against online gambling. As part of a larger campaign to target payment systems that facilitate betting activity, police also stepped up financial enforcement in April of this year by blocking 33,252 bank accounts linked to internet gambling activities.
Earlier in March, the government blocked thousands of illegal gambling websites and froze additional funds linked to betting activities. During the same period, PPATK worked with law enforcement agencies on the execution of Rp58 billion (US$3.5 million) in assets tied to online gambling cases.
Gambling activity remains widespread
At the beginning of the year, Indonesia reported a decline in online gambling turnover after PPATK disclosed that total money circulation linked to the sector had fallen by 20 per cent to Rp286.84 trillion (US$19 billion), down from Rp359.81 trillion (US$24 billion) the previous year. Despite the decline, authorities said online gambling activity remained widespread, with 422.1 million gambling transactions and Rp36.01 trillion (US$2.4 billion) in deposits still recorded across the country.
PPATK later told lawmakers that firm measures introduced under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration had played a critical role in improving coordination against online gambling, despite the fact that gambling activity linked to digital payment platforms remained widespread throughout Indonesia.
Why the crackdown continues to struggle
Despite broader enforcement efforts targeting financial transactions, social media platforms and foreign-linked operations, online gambling networks continue operating through increasingly adaptive digital systems. Speaking exclusively to SiGMA News, Houyoux LL.M. Patrick, President and Founder of PT SYDECO Sovereign Cybersecurity & AI, said the issue had moved beyond traditional website blocking.
“Indonesia has indeed intensified blocking and takedown efforts against online gambling platforms. However, from a cybersecurity perspective, the issue is no longer limited to ‘websites’ in the traditional sense,” Patrick said.
Patrick said modern online gambling networks now rely on distributed digital infrastructure designed to keep operations active across multiple systems and platforms. “Modern online gambling ecosystems operate through highly distributed infrastructures involving mirror domains, Application Programming Interface (API)-based traffic distribution, encrypted communications, automated redirection systems, cloud relays, bot amplification and rapidly changing network endpoints.”
“As a result, enforcement mechanisms focused only on domain blocking or website takedowns often react after the infrastructure has already adapted or migrated elsewhere,” he said.
A 2025 cybersecurity study titled Just Dork and Crawl: Measuring Illegal Online Gambling Defacement in Indonesian Websites also highlighted how online gambling operators continue adapting to enforcement efforts through redirects, hidden URL injections and repeated domain changes. Researchers identified 453 gambling-related defaced webpages during a one-month observation period and found repeated infrastructure reuse, regenerated access pathways and recurring third-party domains linked to gambling-related activity.
Patrick added that the issue should increasingly be viewed “not only as a content problem, but as a behavioural and infrastructure-level cybersecurity challenge.”
He further described online gambling as an “edge-layer” and API-driven threat because much of its operational resilience comes from infrastructure techniques rather than standalone websites alone.
According to Patrick, operators frequently rely on encrypted traffic, rapidly rotating mirror domains, Content Delivery Network (CDN) distribution, API relays, automated bot systems and dynamic traffic-routing mechanisms that allow them to regenerate access paths even after enforcement measures are applied.
“This allows operators to continuously regenerate access paths even after blocking measures are applied,” he said.
He added that traditional cybersecurity systems often attempt to detect malicious activity only after traffic has already entered infrastructure networks, while newer behavioural cybersecurity approaches increasingly focus on identifying abnormal patterns at edge-layer level before operational compromise or wider propagation occurs.
Cybersecurity coordination remains a challenge
Patrick said wider coordination between cybersecurity infrastructure, telecommunications systems and financial intelligence networks would likely become increasingly important for future enforcement efforts. He said, “Current enforcement strategies have produced important results, but cybersecurity coordination still faces structural challenges.”
“The issue is not only blocking access, but building a coordinated national cybersecurity architecture,” he said, pointing to the need for infrastructure-level behavioural analysis, encrypted traffic intelligence, inter-provider coordination, real-time threat sharing, API-level monitoring and adaptive detection mechanisms.
According to Patrick, the cross-border nature of online gambling networks has expanded enforcement beyond website blocking to include legal coordination, telecommunications systems and cybersecurity infrastructure. “Online gambling ecosystems evolve rapidly and operate transnationally. This means enforcement must increasingly combine legal coordination, telecommunications policy, cybersecurity infrastructure and behavioural network intelligence,” he said.
“In my opinion, future progress will depend not only on stronger blocking measures, but on the development of sovereign and adaptive cybersecurity capabilities capable of responding to continuously evolving digital infrastructures,” he said.
A crackdown struggling to keep pace
The scale of Indonesia’s crackdown reflects how online gambling has evolved into a far more complex challenge than conventional law enforcement alone can address. Despite wider enforcement efforts across financial systems, social media platforms and cross-border operations, authorities continue reporting large-scale gambling activity involving millions of transactions and online users. The continued volume of transactions and online activity highlights how the challenge for authorities now extends beyond removing gambling websites alone to addressing the wider digital systems linked to online gambling operations.
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