Block PokerStars on iPhone

What Fold'em covers, layer by layer

Three apps and three sites, measured on 1 September 2026 against Fold'em's guided checklist, the curated list it hands to Screen Time, and the live resolver at dns.foldem.app.

In Safari, and in the app

Every name this phone looks up goes to dns.foldem.app for as long as the web shield's DNS setting is on, and that answer reaches every app on the phone rather than Safari alone. On 1 September 2026 it answered pokerstars.com and pokerstars.net with 0.0.0.0, the address for nowhere, so those pages never load in Safari, in Chrome, in Firefox or inside any other app on this phone. It did not cover pokerstars.uk that day: that name answered with a real address. Switch the DNS setting off and every answer here is a real address again, so the setting is half of what makes this true. The Shield tab's web tile reads On while it is on.

The list Fold'em hands to Screen Time is ten domains long and no PokerStars domain is on it, so that layer adds nothing here. In a browser this operator is covered by the web shield above, and by nothing else.

Fold'em's own block screen is a third thing and it is neither of the first two: it lands over an app you sealed and over a website you added yourself in the picker, and over nothing else. The PokerStars, PokerStars Casino and PokerStars Sports apps are not on the guided checklist, so Fold'em does not name them for you. Search by name in Apple's picker, tick, and seal: the app shield covers the apps you picked and nothing else.

Their own self exclusion tools

As their responsible gaming page read on 28 August 2026, PokerStars offers cooling off periods of 12 and 24 hours and time outs of 7, 30, 60 and 120 days, and states that all of them are irreversible for the length chosen. A 6 month self exclusion goes further: it asks you to withdraw the balance first and does not reinstate the account automatically. Anything longer, permanent, or an extension of one already running, goes through their help center rather than the settings screen.

An exclusion covers the Stars Account and every product using the same username. The same page says it does not cover Paddy Power or Betfair, which have to be excluded separately, and it recommends gamban and GamBlock, which block from the device.

Fold'em belongs to that second group. It can neither start a Stars exclusion nor end one, and it holds this iPhone whether the account is excluded, open or closed.

Source: pokerstars.com/about/responsible-gaming, archived 28 August 2026, accessed 2 September 2026.

What this does not do

Fold'em runs on this iPhone and nowhere else. It does not reach a second phone, a laptop, a shop or cash, and it cannot stop an account being opened. It does not cover any PokerStars domain this measurement never asked about, and it does not seal an app you never picked: an app filed outside the Games category is covered only by being on your own list. The web shield does not cover pokerstars.uk, which answered with a real address on 1 September 2026. The resolver's list is compiled from public gambling lists that change, so 1 September 2026 is the bound on every answer on this page.