Am I responsible if they gamble anyway?
Updated September 2026
No. The role has exactly one power, which is to answer an early exit request, and it applies to the blocks on one iPhone. Fold'em is a commitment device: it moves a decision to a calmer moment and adds a person to the loop, and it is not a treatment service, not medical advice and not a monitoring tool. Nothing you are shown would tell you whether somebody gambled, because nothing about apps, sites, browsing or money is sent to a partner at all.
What the role can actually reach
The whole authority a keyholder holds is stated on the back of your own card: you approve or decline an early exit, and nothing else. There is no setting of theirs you can change, no block you can add or remove, no timer you can move, and no way to unlock their phone from yours.
The pass and the status page are read only by construction, not by policy. A keyholder is never given write access to any of their data, and the one page that can send a decision is limited to keeping the lock: an approval cannot be given remotely at all, from any surface.
Even the alerts are not yours to shape. Which optional updates fire is the user's own setting, in their own app, and there is no toggle for you on any page or pass. The one thing that is never optional is that a change to those settings is itself reported to you.
What no app on that phone can reach
Fold'em blocks gambling apps and betting sites on the one iPhone it is installed on. Four things sit outside that boundary, and they are not defects.
A second phone or tablet is a different device with its own settings. A desktop or laptop is not running any of this. A betting shop or a casino is a place, not an app. Cash leaves no trace on a phone at all. None of the four produce an event, a count or a notification, so a calm card is not evidence that any of them did not happen.
The product's own design says the same thing about permissions: a person can revoke the Screen Time authorization the blocks are built on. What Fold'em does about that is detect it and tell you, not prevent it. Social cost, rather than an operating system lock, is the mechanism.
What the role is actually for
The value of a keyholder is that somebody who is not the person gambling knows what is happening, and that ending the commitment early has to be said out loud to a person rather than done quietly in a settings screen. That is what makes an exit request a real moment, and it is why approving it is deliberately something that can only happen face to face.
Everything the role asks of you is rare and bounded. You answer an exit request if one ever opens, and you approve a handover if they ever want to give the key on. Between those two moments there is nothing to check and no schedule you are on.
If you are worried about them
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Read the card or the page for the fact
The status word says what the blocks are doing. Protected means the phone confirmed them recently; Protection off means they are not running; Not confirmed means the phone has been quiet for a while. Those are the only three claims either surface makes.
The status page
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Send a message rather than an alarm
On the attention faces the card names the one useful act in words, and it is always the same shape: check in with them, or on a lapse, remind them to renew. There is no escalation path built into the product, because there is nothing further for a keyholder to do.
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Point them at a helpline if it is beyond a message
The helplines at the foot of these pages are independent of Fold'em and are answered by people who do this for a living. The app carries a directory of them too, chosen by the region the phone is set to.
What this does not do
Nothing in Fold'em makes you accountable for another person's behaviour, and nothing in it is designed to. It gives you one answer to give, rarely, and it makes sure you are told when the blocks stop running.
It also does not make you a support service. Fold'em is a commitment device, not a treatment service and not a monitoring tool, and nothing on these pages is medical advice. If holding the key is more than you want to carry, stepping away is a supported act rather than a failure, and their protection continues without you.
Still stuck? Email support@foldem.app and we answer within two working days.