Skip to content
Fold’em Try for free
  1. Topics
  2. When quitting gambling did not stick

How to block yourself from gambling

Register with the scheme, block your cards, block the phone, and hand the undo to somebody else, in that order.

Updated October 2026

Why the order matters more than the tools

The phone is the obvious place to start, because it is where it happens. That is the third step here, and putting it third is the whole argument of this page: the first two reach things a phone never touches, they are free, and neither one can be undone at one in the morning by the person who set it up.

Work down the list as far as you have energy for tonight. Every step is worth something on its own, and no step is undone by stopping before the next one.

  1. Register with the scheme where you live

    This is the one with the widest reach and the lowest cost, and it is a public service rather than a product. Great Britain has GAMSTOP, whose own page says it blocks you from signing up for or using online accounts with gambling companies licensed in Great Britain for a period from 6 months up to 5 years. Australia has BetStop, a free and secure way to exclude yourself from all online and phone wagering providers licensed in Australia in one go, from a minimum of 3 months, up to a lifetime. Ontario has BetGuard, which iGaming Ontario describes as a way for people 19 and over to voluntarily opt out of all Ontario regulated online gaming platforms through one online portal. The United States has no national scheme and runs it state by state; the National Council on Problem Gambling's directory says to use the map below or contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline™ (1-800-MY-RESET) to be connected with gambling resources in your state. Every quotation here was read from that organisation's own page on 3 September 2026.

  2. Ask your bank for a gambling block

    Many banks can refuse gambling transactions on your cards, some with a delay before the block can be lifted again, which is the property that makes it worth having. Ask yours what it offers and how long removing it takes. This is not our layer and we cannot set it for you; the UK Gambling Commission's own page for players points readers at blocking gambling payments with their bank alongside self exclusion.

  3. Block the apps and the addresses both

    This is the layer that reaches an address rather than an account, and it is the only one that does. Apple's Screen Time can shield chosen apps so tapping one draws a block screen over it instead of opening it, and an encrypted DNS setting can answer betting addresses with 0.0.0.0, the address for nowhere, so the pages never load in any browser on the phone. Do both, because an app you cannot open is a website you can.

  4. Give the undo to somebody else

    The first two steps already have this property built in, which is why they are first. The phone layer does not have it by default, because every setting on a phone belongs to the person holding the phone. Naming a keyholder is how the third step earns the same shape: ending protection becomes a request and a wait rather than a switch, and the person holding the key is told when the Screen Time seal goes off, when the phone stops confirming, and when protection is ending.

What the phone layer is made of

Three separate mechanisms with three separate failure modes, named separately because a single word for all of them hides where each one gives way.

Three places Fold’em holds you Two rings sit side by side inside one larger ring. The left ring is the app shield: Screen Time holding the betting apps you picked. The right ring is the web shield: the resolver holding the addresses. The larger ring around both carries your protection at the top and, at the bottom, the person holding your key, if you choose one. Each place answers one question: is this app blocked, is this address blocked, and who holds the key. THREE PLACES, THREE QUESTIONS Protection is on Mom holds the key The app shield Screen Time The web shield the resolver Is this app blocked? Screen Time answers Is this address blocked? the resolver answers Who holds the key? a person, if you choose one Three places Fold’em holds you Two rings sit side by side inside one larger ring. The left ring is the app shield: Screen Time holding the betting apps you picked. The right ring is the web shield: the resolver holding the addresses. The larger ring around both carries your protection at the top and, at the bottom, the person holding your key, if you choose one. Each place answers one question: is this app blocked, is this address blocked, and who holds the key. THREE PLACES, THREE QUESTIONS Protection is on Mom holds the key The app shield Screen Time The web shield the resolver Is this app blocked? Screen Time answers Is this address blocked? the resolver answers Who holds the key? a person, if you choose one
Your apps and gambling sites sit inside Screen Time and a DNS setting on the phone; around both sit your protection and, if you choose one, the person holding your key.
  • The apps. You pick them in Apple's own picker, which hands over opaque tokens rather than names, so the count of what you sealed leaves the phone and the identities never do. The seal is always on, with no schedule and no daily window, and the phone writes it back on every launch. You select the whole Games category in Apple's picker. It covers apps installed later, which is what catches a new betting app filed as a game.
  • The addresses. Every lookup the phone makes goes to an encrypted resolver that answers about 356,500 known gambling domains with the address for nowhere. It reaches every browser on the phone, browsers inside other apps included, and it needs no tunnel. One more list sits beside it and is never added to it: any website you add by typing its address, and it stays blocked while protection holds.
  • The commitment and the person. The record of your protection lives on the server rather than in the app, and the server decides when protection comes off. The phone reads that answer and applies it, so turning the phone off, flying or changing the date in Settings does not end your protection.

What each step does not reach

Worth reading once, because every one of these is somebody's story about a system that failed.

A register reaches accounts at the operators inside it and nothing outside that list, which is why BetStop's own page says the scheme does not apply to online casino games or other gambling services that are illegally provided in Australia. In Great Britain and Ontario the betting premises are a separate scheme with separate paperwork. A bank block reaches payments and not pages. And the phone layer reaches one handset: a second phone, a tablet, a laptop, a betting shop and cash are all outside it, and no setting on this phone changes that.

The layers are not a wall and they are not sold as one. They are four different costs on the same decision, and the point of stacking them is that no single lapse opens everything at once. What self exclusion covers quotes each scheme in full, and why blockers fail is about the ways a device layer gives way.

If you only do one thing tonight

Register. It takes minutes, it costs nothing, it reaches an entire licensed industry on every device you own, and unlike anything on your phone it cannot be reversed by you in the next ten seconds. Then, when you have the energy, come back for the rest.

And if you want to talk to somebody first, the numbers at the foot of this page are free and answer at any hour.

Not the page you came for?

The help center answers how the app behaves, screen by screen. If your question is not there, write to us. A person reads it and answers within two working days.

Email support@foldem.app

If you need someone now

Free, and not run by Fold’em.

Gam-Anon is a community for people supporting someone who gambles.