The full answer
If somebody holds your key they decide: they agree by showing you a code to scan while you are together, and the scan starts a wait of 48 hours. If nobody holds your key, the wait is seven days from the moment you ask. Either way the request is then ready for seven days and closes if you do not end protection, and nothing about what is blocked changes at any point along the way.
Ending protection is a request, not a switch
There is no control anywhere in Fold’em that ends your protection on the spot. What the app offers is a request written to the server, and every step after it is decided there. Your phone shows the position and the count; it never shortens either, and it never opens anything on its own.
The door is on the Settings tab, under Your protection, and it reads End protection. Every page behind it is titled End protection. With a keyholder, the page is headed with their name, Mom will be asked if Mom holds your key, over Nothing changes until Mom says yes. With nobody holding your key, it reads You will wait 7 days. The page states the whole shape before you send anything, the filled button is Keep protection, and sending is a hold rather than a tap.
What happens after you ask
With a keyholder, the request opens and they are told. They decide, and there are two answers: they can say no, or they can say yes. A no closes that request, and it does not turn into a yes. If they say nothing at all for seven days, the request closes on its own; silence is not a slow yes.
They say yes by showing you a code, in their Fold’em app after Face ID, or on their Wallet card if they joined by email before 3.0. You scan it with yours while you are together, using With Mom now? Scan their code on your request, and that scan starts a wait of 48 hours. Fold’em cannot check that you are together: the code works for up to a day, so a photo of it would scan too, which is why it is meant to be shown in person.
With nobody holding your key, there is nobody to ask, so the wait is the whole of the friction: seven days from the moment your request is written down.
Both roads arrive in the same place. When the wait ends the server marks the request ready, and a ready request is held for seven days. Use it and your protection ends. Leave it and it closes, and your protection carries on as though you had never asked.
Asking, and watching it run
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Open the door
Settings, then Your protection, then End protection. The row is drawn in red, as the destructive action it is, and with nobody holding your key it reads 7 days from your request. Where no hold is offered, the page says why instead: a handover is in progress, a no came less than 48 hours ago, a request is already open, an invitation from before Fold’em 3.0 is still out, or a Lockdown run is on, in which case you can ask to end Lockdown from the Lock tab.
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Send it, and nothing moves
From the moment the request exists on the server, Today carries a card saying so and naming who is deciding. What is blocked does not change: every app you sealed stays sealed and every site stays blocked. There is no state in which asking has made the block softer than it was.
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The wait counts down in the open
Once the wait is running, the card names when the request will be ready. Every one of those deadlines is a stamp the server wrote, so turning the phone off, changing its clock or reinstalling the app moves none of it, and your phone never sits waiting on a countdown of its own.
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End protection, or let it close
When the wait ends the card reads Ready when you are, and the request waits seven days for you. Ending protection then is your own act, with a hold. If you never do, the request closes and your protection simply carries on.
If they say no
A no is told to you plainly and carries no reason. That request is over, and neither support nor your keyholder can turn it into a yes. You can ask again 48 hours after the no, and the page says from when.
The new request goes to your keyholder again, but a run of nos has a limit. If you keep asking, each time within 14 days of the last no, a request you make 30 days or more after the first one skips your keyholder and waits 7 days, as it would with nobody holding your key.
If you are here at a bad hour rather than at a planned one, when quitting gambling did not stick is the page written for that hour.
What this does not do
Asking to end protection does not weaken anything while it runs, and it cannot be sped up by support. It does not reach past this phone either: a second device, a desktop and a betting shop are outside everything this touches. And it is not a way to lose what you have held. Your gambling free count runs from your last bet, so ending your protection does not reset it, and the money you kept stays on the record.
Write to us and a person reads it. We answer within two working days, and we would rather hear the question twice than not at all.