Wow...
Now a serious question:
Can we add betblocker as a solution to help customers control gambling within our responsible gaming pages?
BetBlocker is a project we set up a little over a year ago. Basically it's an app that users can download onto their device and that will restrict their device from accessing thousands of online gambling sites. It allows the user to select the length of the restriction and provides a cooling off period if you decide to deactivate after the exclusion ends.
There are several other products on the market that do this, but they all charge the user. I've never been massively comfortable with that. The one thing that people who need software to help them stop gambling tend to have in common is that they don't have enough money. So BetBlocker was developed to address this. It's free, it doesn't advertise anything and we don't gather any user information (so we can never be accused of using this for marketing purposes).
We haven't really properly launched this yet as it's still in 'beta' levels of development. The desktop versions were very straightforward to put together and work effectively. The mobile versions have been a nightmare on that front. The mobile platforms make it difficult to put in place the necessary restrictions to stop it being removed and once we've got round that (only Android so far, still working on iOS) there have been other issues with BetBlocker interfering with some users internet connection (due to either poor signal strength or conflicts with other apps they've installed). We don't want to push this out to operators until I'm really confident that the product is delivering an 'excellent' level of service. So, yes anyone (operator, affiliate, regulator) is free to include this in their Responsible Gambling material, no permission is required, but it may be wise to give us a little more time to polish the product to a decent level especially given that the majority of the market is now mobile.
TP