How does Fold'em block betting sites?
Updated September 2026
Fold'em installs a DNS setting that points every lookup this phone makes at its own resolver, and the resolver answers a known gambling domain with 0.0.0.0, the address for nowhere, so the page never loads. That covers every browser on the phone, in app browsers included, and it needs no VPN tunnel. Screen Time adds a second, smaller layer that blocks a curated list inside Safari, and any website you pick yourself is shielded like an app. Fold'em can see whether the setting is on and say so; it can never turn it off, because only iOS Settings can.
The web shield is a DNS setting, not a VPN
Every time this phone opens a page it first asks where that address lives. The web shield puts Fold'em's own resolver, dns.foldem.app, in front of that question, as an encrypted DNS setting registered with iOS. When the address is one of the 356,500 gambling sites on the shield's list, the resolver answers 0.0.0.0, which is nowhere, and the browser reports that the server cannot be found. Nothing is intercepted and no traffic is tunnelled through Fold'em: the only thing that changes is who answers the question.
Because it sits at the name lookup, the shield reaches every browser on the phone, the browsers built into other apps, and the addresses those apps call for themselves. That is why it is the layer that carries breadth, and why the numbers on it are far larger than the two Screen Time layers beside it.
Three things can happen to a blocked site
A site that does not load has not necessarily been stopped the same way twice, and the failure looks different in each case.
- The resolver stops it. The page simply never loads and the browser says the server cannot be found. There is no Fold'em screen, because a name that resolves to nowhere never reaches a page.
- Screen Time's own site list stops it. Safari shows Apple's own restricted site page. This is the small curated list, applied through the Screen Time web filter, and it reaches Safari alone.
- A website you picked stops it. Sites you tick in Apple's picker are shielded the way an app is, so they land on Fold'em's own block screen.
One more side effect comes with the Screen Time filter: while any filter is applied, Safari private browsing is switched off by iOS, so there is no private window to slip through.
Turning the web shield on
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Add the shield
The setup step reads "Turn on the web shield." and "Every request this phone makes is checked against 356,500 gambling sites. When one matches, the page never loads." Tapping Add the shield saves the setting and raises the system permission alert. Tapping Don't Allow returns you flatly, with no scolding and no consequence line.
Setup, adding the shield
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Flip the switch in iOS Settings
Saving the setting does not select it. The app gives you three crumbs, "Settings › General", "VPN, DNS & Device Management" and "DNS › choose Fold'em", and an Open Settings button. The page moves on by itself the moment it reads the switch as flipped, so you never have to come back and tell it.
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The tile reads it back
On the Shield tab the WEB tile reads On and Sites never load once iOS reports the setting enabled. Opening the tile shows the same in a sentence, "Gambling sites are blocked. 356,500 known gambling sites never load on this phone.", with the switch and the sites you added underneath.
The web shield sheet
What the app can and cannot do to the setting
Fold'em can save the DNS setting and can read whether iOS has it enabled. It can never remove it and never disable it: the off switch is in iOS Settings and belongs to you, so the app is built to detect and report rather than to hold the setting open. Turning it off yourself is honest, visible and one of the things Fold'em watches.
The shield also answers only when it is asked. If another VPN or a private relay is answering DNS first, the tile reads Standing by and Another VPN in front, which is the truthful reading rather than an accusation: a resolver that is never asked cannot block anything. Turn the other VPN off and the shield takes over on its own. Two small probes run on the app's existing cadence, one for a site that should be blocked and one for a site that should not, so the tile is a reading and not an assumption.
During setup the step offers a quiet "Not now". Declining does not end the ask: the step stays in your setup list, the Shield tab keeps offering to set it up, and Home shows the shield as something still to do.
What this does not do
The web shield covers this phone. It does not reach a laptop, a second phone or a friend's device on the same network. It cannot block a site that is not on the list, and no list of gambling domains is complete, which is why you can add sites yourself and why the operator pages state coverage per site rather than in general. It answers names, never pages: the privacy page states that Fold'em does not read your browsing history, and no site name appears anywhere in the list of what a keyholder can see. And it never claims to be running when it cannot be read: if the status cannot be fetched the tile says Unknown rather than green.
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