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What self exclusion covers, and what closes the gaps

A register stops your accounts with the operators it names, and the phone in your hand is the layer it never touches.

Updated October 2026

First, what we are not

Fold’em is an app that blocks betting apps and addresses on one iPhone. It is not GAMSTOP, it is not BetStop, it is not BetGuard, it has no connection to any of them, and it does not register anybody with any scheme. Those are public services, they are free, and every one of them is worth doing before an app is worth downloading. This page exists because a phone stays open after you register with one, and that gap has an ordinary explanation.

What each register says it covers

Every quotation below was read from the scheme's own page on 3 September 2026, and BetStop's were read again on 11 September 2026. Where a scheme's own site could not be read by an automated request, that is said rather than filled in from memory.

  • GAMSTOP, Great Britain. Its own about page states that Gamstop Online blocks you from signing up for or using online accounts with gambling companies licensed in Great Britain, and that you can choose how long to exclude yourself from gambling, from 6 months up to 5 years. The same page says the scheme is used by over half a million people in the UK. Its home page points separately at Gamstop Betting Shops, noting that many people who use the online scheme also use Gamstop Betting Shops to block themselves from betting shops, which is the plainest statement that the online register and the premises scheme are two different things.
  • BetStop, Australia. The register's own about page describes it as a free and secure way to exclude yourself from all online and phone wagering providers licensed in Australia in one go, says that once registered those providers should not: let you open a betting account, let you place a bet, send you direct marketing, such as emails, and offers a minimum of 3 months, up to a lifetime. It is also the one scheme that prints its own boundary in a single sentence: BetStop - the National Self-Exclusion Register does not apply to online casino games or other gambling services that are illegally provided in Australia. Its questions page adds that you may apply to cancel your self-exclusion early after at least 3 months of self-exclusion, and that to do so you must complete a Commonwealth statutory declaration to confirm you have seen a counsellor or a general practitioner to discuss your decision to cancel your self-exclusion.
  • BetGuard, Ontario. The register's own site is built in a way an automated read cannot follow, so this is quoted from iGaming Ontario, which runs it, on its launch announcement. BetGuard is a tool that enables individuals aged 19 and older to voluntarily opt out of all Ontario regulated online gaming platforms through one online portal, it incorporates all igaming websites in Ontario's regulated market, including OLG's, and once someone opts out players are prevented from accessing their existing accounts, creating new accounts, or receive marketing communications from any regulated igaming site in Ontario. The terms offered are 6 months, 1 year, 5 years or a custom term. The scheme opened on 14 May 2026.

The United States has no national scheme, and that is the fact worth carrying. Self exclusion is run state by state and the shape differs in every one. New Jersey, as an example read on the same day from its Division of Gaming Enforcement, offers self-exclusion from all casino gaming and Sports Wagering activities located in Atlantic City casinos AND Racetrack Sports Wagering Facilities AND from all Internet Gaming and Sports Wagering activities, with minimum periods of one year, five years or lifetime when registering in person and one year or five years online. For the rest, the National Council on Problem Gambling's directory is the honest starting point: it 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.

Four layers, and what each one reaches

Reading those four descriptions side by side, the shape of the thing becomes obvious. Each register reaches accounts at the operators inside it, on any device you own. That is wide in one direction and exactly bounded in another.

The four layers, nested by how far each one reaches Four arcs nest inside one another. The widest is the national register, which reaches accounts at every licensed operator, on any device. Inside it is your bank, which reaches payments from your cards. Inside that is this phone, which reaches the apps and the addresses on one handset. At the centre is the key, the person a request to end protection goes to, if you name one. Each shell reaches something the next one does not, and no shell is a replacement for another. FOUR LAYERS, FOUR DIFFERENT REACHES The register Your bank This phone The key one answer The register accounts at licensed operators Your bank payments from your cards This phone the apps and the addresses The key the person the request goes to The four layers, nested by how far each one reaches Four arcs nest inside one another. The widest is the national register, which reaches accounts at every licensed operator, on any device. Inside it is your bank, which reaches payments from your cards. Inside that is this phone, which reaches the apps and the addresses on one handset. At the centre is the key, the person a request to end protection goes to, if you name one. Each shell reaches something the next one does not, and no shell is a replacement for another. FOUR LAYERS, FOUR DIFFERENT REACHES The register Your bank This phone The key one answer The register accounts at licensed operators Your bank payments from your cards This phone the apps and the addresses The key the person the request goes to
Four layers, nested by how far each one reaches. A register reaches accounts at licensed operators, on any device. Your bank reaches payments from your cards. This phone reaches the apps and the addresses on one handset. At the centre is the key: the person a request to end protection goes to, if you name one. Each shell reaches something the next one does not, so none of them replaces another.

Where a register stops, and what closes that gap

The gap is worth naming plainly, because the same sentence tells you what to do about it.

A register works on the operator's side. It tells the companies inside the scheme who you are, and those companies refuse to open or keep an account for you. Everything follows from that one design.

So a scheme covers the operators it names and no others. It applies to accounts rather than to devices: a phone that has been registered under a scheme is exactly as capable of loading a betting page as it was the day before, and the app you already installed is still installed. It does not reach anything outside its own licensing regime, which is what BetStop's own sentence about services illegally provided in Australia is saying out loud. And in Great Britain and Ontario the premises are a separate scheme, with separate paperwork.

The thing that closes the gap is not a better register. It is a second layer that works on the device side instead of on the operator side, so that the address fails to resolve and the app refuses to open whatever any account somewhere says. The two are meant to stack, and the regulator says so itself: the Gambling Commission's own page for players, alongside its description of self exclusion as a tool used by those who have recognised that their gambling is harmful to them, tells the reader outright that you could consider software which blocks your access to gambling websites.

Does self exclusion work

The honest answer is that it removes a category of access and leaves others, and a register that seems not to be working may be meeting exactly the boundary above rather than failing. Registering is still the single highest leverage thing on this page, because it reaches an entire industry with one form and it costs nothing.

Two properties are worth knowing before you register, since both are the point rather than the small print. You cannot cancel early on a whim: GAMSTOP runs for the length you picked, and BetStop requires a statutory declaration and a conversation with a counsellor or a doctor. And the registration outlives your enthusiasm for it, which is the same reason a commitment with a wait in it is worth more than a switch.

The layer a register never touches

On an iPhone the device layer has two halves and they fail differently, so they are worth knowing apart.

Apple's Screen Time can seal chosen apps so that tapping one draws a block screen over it instead of opening it. The app stays installed and simply does not open, and there is no control on that screen that continues. Separately, an encrypted DNS setting can point every lookup the phone makes at a resolver that answers a known gambling domain with 0.0.0.0, the address for nowhere, so the page never loads in any browser on the phone, browsers living inside other apps included. That second half is what covers the sites a register never reaches.

Both halves have the same limit and it is worth stating rather than discovering. They belong to the person holding the phone: Screen Time permission can be withdrawn in iOS Settings, the DNS setting can be switched off in iOS Settings, and no app on iOS can prevent either. What a product can do about that is report it rather than pretend, which is what a keyholder is for. The order that holds puts all four in sequence, and why blockers fail is the fuller account of where a device layer gives way.

What this page is not

It is not legal or clinical advice, and it is not a route around anything. If you are registered with a scheme and looking for a way to gamble anyway, the number at the foot of this page is a better use of the next ten minutes than any of the above, and it is free.

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