If you are really having problems with online gambling then blocking sites could be a way to help you not gamble when you get the urge.  There are many different blocking solutions.

The ones that GamCare suggest are  (www.gamblock.com) or betfilter (www.betfilter.com).  These are paid for subscriptions which I do not like.  They appear to do the job though and will obviously pay for themselves if they stop you gambling.  I hear they are near impossible to remove unless you have the password once installed.  I have no experience of using those though.

These industrial strength blockers may be needed for the serious gambling addict.  However there are some free alternatives that may do the job.

The first and simplest is K9 Web Blocker.  This is a general web blocker which you can use to block gambling content.  Any site the software doesn’t pick up, you can add manually to the block list.  You can only unblock sites if you know the password.  You can either get a friend to install it and know the password or create a random one and throw it away.

K9 can be installed on PCs, Macs as well as tablets, iphones and android devices.  Just look for the software in the App Store or Play Store.

The other good feature of K9 is that you can set NightGuard, which can block internet access at certain times.  No sneaking off at night to gamble or go on the internet at all.  The downside of K9 is that its PC specific.  You have to install it on all the PCs/ Macs you want to block.

The free alternative to this is use OpenDNS web filtering.  This is allows you to configure your router to block all gambling sites.  This is good as it automatically blocks all devices using that internet connection from visiting types of sites.  Gambling is just one of the categories that can be blocked, pornographic, drugs, hate sites, etc can also be blocked.  This is pretty straightforward if you have access to the router.

If you haven’t got access to the router, you can still change the DNS on your computer but if you have administrator privileges, its easy to change the DNS and bypass the block.  I’d recommend, using K9 in that case. The main advantage of using filtering at the router level is that any new device will automatically be blocked.

As with anything though, you can probably bypass these blocks if you really wanted to. The only safe way is to use the responsible gambling safety features that all reputable gaming organistions adhere to.