Disturbing UK Gambling Funding Trends
The UK used to have the best systems in place to help people harmed by gambling. These days there are opaque funding relationships between ineffective GamBlock® imitators and casinos. It will put more lives at risk if this trend spreads to other countries.
When GamBlock® started in 2000, the UK Police would always send their members out if GamBlock® called them about a suicide threat. They would then send us a report, letting us know if they determined the person a danger to themselves or others. We were confident that the UK help lines, police and other services would all work together to help people harmed by gambling.
UK people harmed by gambling indicated to GamBlock® several years ago that they were being urged to install ineffective GamBlock® imitators and participate in cognitive therapy that would enable them to gamble again. We are not counsellors. We are a software company. However, people who use GamBlock® have stated they cannot gamble responsibly. Based on this, GamBlock® supports cognitive therapy as a tool to find the underlying issues that led to gambling harm but not as a tool to keep people harmed by gambling "gambling responsibly".
Responsible casinos genuinely prevent entry to their physical/terrestrial casinos worldwide when a person has declared they are a harmed by gambling and employ similar practices online. Irresponsible casinos target people harmed by gambling online, where GamBlock® is needed to protect people from themselves.
If we put ourselves in the shoes of irresponsible casinos, where legislation requires they must provide links to gambling blocking software, of course they will recommend, support and have opaque funding relationships with ineffective and easily subverted GamBlock® imitators that keep their best customers, people harmed by gambling, gambling.
GamBlock® is funded by sales and occasionally from my own funds. This means our only objective to provide absolute and irreversible blocking of gambling sites and apps during a protection period. From a commercial perspective, widespread advertising of GamBlock® imitators helps our sales, when people harmed by gambling ultimately turn to us to absolutely block gambling. However, it is hard to determine how many lives are lost before that happens.
Brexit and the general integrity issues seem to have distracted people from issues like the plight of gambling harm help practices. It is my hope that Sein Fein, Fianna Gael, Fianna Fail and all the political parties purporting to help young people in Ireland, and Sein Fein's case, Northern Ireland, make sure that any efficacy tests are truly independent with transparent funding sources. This would differentiate them from existing practices in the UK. It is also my hope that other countries follow suit.
It is important to note that legislators have no power over dark web/onion gambling, funded by bitcoin, which GamBlock® blocks while allowing non-gambling onion surfing and non-gambling Virtual Private Network surfing.
David Warr
Creator of GamBlock®
GamBlock® believes responsible gambling and harm reduction suits the majority of people. GamBlock® is not anti-gambling – it supports responsible gambling and harm reduction for those it can help.