Are Online Poker Sites Rigged?

There are many railbirds that express opinion that Online poker sites are rigged. I had a same opinion for a while and did a little online research on this subject. Here is the summary that makes sense to me.

Rigged vs cheating.
Rigged means that owners of Poker site deliberately alter the software algorithm to give certain player(s) advantage over others. Cheating is when person(s) use illegal practices to gain advantage.
It does not make sense for the major online poker rooms to be rigged. These are multi-million dollar a year industries that do just fine the way they are, there is absolutely no need for them to be fixed or rigged in any way. If there is anything dubious going on it would have been done by a human being and they tend not to be able to keep secrets forever! The losses that will be suffered are will be so huge….

So play on major, known sites!

Do these sites have security holes? May be, probably. Who knows what today’s technologically advanced cheaters can invent…. Is it possible that they have dishonest employees? Of cause, remember the AP scandal? But these cases are not really a case of company policy.
You suffer to many bad beats? What is this means? I think that online people play totally different then would in the live game. Here is a quote from article that I totally agree with.
“there is more chance that you'll get a bad beat in an online poker game than in a regular table game at home or in a casino. The reason for this however is not that there are "bent" tables, the reason lies with the players themselves. The online poker player is a different breed from his real table counterpart and bets in a different way. There are a few possible reasons for this, but whether it is because the game doesn't seem as real because there's nothing that's actually tangible, or maybe it's just that the standard of play is much lower online, the fact remains that people playing online tend to bet more and on worse hands than those offline.
People will play almost any hand online and often the whole game is just one of bluff and bigger bluff. Almost everybody - especially on the lower money tables - wants to be involved in every hand. So the fact that more people are in to see the flop means that there's much more chance of you picking up a "bad beat". That 2 7 which most people would throw away as if it was burning their hands becomes a whole lot more attractive if the flop is 7 7 2! (Article by Ian McIntosh)”

So play more carefully

Good luck.