Why gambling blockers fail, and which failures are yours

Two kinds of failure, and only one of them is the app's

A blocker that did not hold is sometimes a weak app. It can also be an app that did exactly what it said, inside an arrangement with no cost in it, so the block came off in four seconds at the hour it was built for.

The two have different fixes. A tool failure is fixed by changing tools. A setup failure follows you to the next tool, and to the one after that.

The tool's failures

• A configuration profile you can remove. Many blockers install a profile or a DNS setting that redirects lookups. It is a real mechanism and it stops real pages. It also lives in Settings on a device you own, and removing it takes about as long as adding it did, so a blocker of this class is exactly as strong as your willingness to leave the setting alone.
• An unlock you can buy or ask for. If ending the block involves a payment, a support ticket or a code, there is a price on the thing you were trying to make expensive. It does not matter how high that price is at three in the afternoon; the question is what it costs at one in the morning, and a payment takes seconds.
• A filter that only reaches one browser. Apple's own website filter takes effect inside Safari and nowhere else. A blocker built on it alone leaves every other browser open, and it leaves the browsers that live inside other apps. The fix is a layer that answers below the browser rather than inside one.
• A block that is really a reminder. A daily limit, a nudge, a screen you can dismiss. Useful for a habit, and the wrong class of object for this, because every one of them ends in a control that says continue.

The setup's failures

These survive changing products, and they are worth being honest with yourself about before installing anything else.

• You hold the passcode. The self built version is a Screen Time passcode somebody else typed in. Better than nothing, and not what it looks like: Apple's own page on a forgotten Screen Time passcode says to open Settings, tap Screen Time, tap Change Screen Time Passcode twice and, if asked, enter the Apple Account email address and password that you used to set up the Screen Time passcode. If the Apple Account is yours, so is the reset, and it does not need the friend. Fold’em's setup has the person you trust set the passcode, with recovery on their own Apple Account, not yours.
• There is a second device. Every on device blocker holds the device it is installed on. A tablet in a drawer, an old handset and a shared computer are outside it, and no setting on the phone changes that.
• The whole thing comes off as fast as it went on. If uninstalling the blocker ends the block, the block is one long press away and the strength of everything underneath it is irrelevant. This is the failure that decides most of the others.
• Nobody knows. A block only you can see is one only you can undo, at no cost but a private decision at the worst hour. That is what a second person is for, and it is why this product is built around one.

What a block that is not a reminder looks like

A Screen Time shield is not a message asking you to reconsider. The app stays installed and simply does not open: a screen lands over it, and there is no control on it that continues.

A second phone, a computer, a betting shop and cash are outside it. Screen Time permission is yours and can be withdrawn in iOS Settings; the encrypted DNS setting is yours and can be switched off there too, and Fold’em can turn neither back on against you. Withdraw the permission and the app shield stops holding. If someone stands with you, their card for you shows Protection off, and if the phone sends no reading of any kind for 24 hours it reads Not confirmed yet. Your supporters are told too, so without a keyholder the people who support you still hear. Your day count is not part of that trade: it counts the days since your last gamble, it counts on while nothing is blocked, and only your own admission resets it.

Switch the DNS setting off and the sites load again, and the Gambling sites layer then reads Needs attention.

Fold’em's own failure paths

Three routes end a block here, and only one of them asks anybody anything. Naming them is the only way the rest of this page is worth reading.

• Deleting the app. An optional restriction stops apps being deleted while it holds, and it is off unless you turn it on, deliberately, because it is device wide: while it holds no app on the phone can be deleted, ours included. Turning it off does nothing on its own: it opens a 72 hour wait on the server, and the lock holds until the wait ends. With it off, deleting Fold’em removes the settings Fold’em applied. It does not end your protection: the record lives on the server, so signing in again brings back your protection, the day count unbroken, your keyholder and the lock, and a reinstall can never bring back a weaker one. Granting Screen Time and picking the apps are then done again by hand, because Apple never lets the app pick leave the phone that made it. Until they are, a keyholder's card reads Not confirmed yet, and past a grace of 12 hours it turns to Protection off.
• Letting the subscription end. If your subscription ends, protection stays on for 72 hours, then ends unless the subscription is restored. It is the one way out that is not a request, it is deliberate, and if someone stands with you, their card for you shows Protection at risk and they are told that protection is ending.
• Waiting out a request to end protection. Seven days from the request when nobody holds your key, or 48 hours after a keyholder agrees in person. Seven days of silence from a keyholder is not a third route: the request closes and protection carries on. None of this is a way round anything; it is the product working, and the wait is the whole of the friction.

The question about deleting a betting app and installing it again

The honest answer is partly a not known.

What is known: you pick apps in Apple's own picker, and it hands Fold’em opaque tokens rather than names. Apple's developer documentation says a token exists to restrict and filter device applications without access to personal user data and that the system uses one to preserve user privacy and prevent anyone outside of a Family Sharing group from identifying what apps and websites the family accesses. What that documentation does not state, anywhere we could read it, is whether a token keeps matching an app after that app has been deleted and installed again. So this page does not tell you that it does, and you should be careful of any page that does tell you, because the same documentation is all it has.

Two things do not depend on the answer. The web layer answers the address rather than the app, so a betting site fails to load in any browser on the phone whatever happened to the app. And the Games layer blocks every app in the App Store's Games category including ones installed later, which is what catches a new betting app filed as a game. Switching it off afterwards starts a wait of 72 hours.

If something is getting through anyway, the troubleshooting page works through the scenarios one at a time and says which are the block working at its edge and which are a setting to change.