Do Porn Blockers Work?

Not for long. You can uninstall a porn blocker in a moment of weakness — and at 1 a.m., alone, you will.

That’s the catch with every blocker: you hold the key, so the wall stands only until you decide to take it down. So we skipped the wall and added a person.

What’s a Clamp?

Your Clamp is the one person you put in charge of your accountability — spouse, sponsor, best friend, whoever you’d least like to disappoint. You hand us their email, and when the app flags something, your Clamp hears about it. You can delete an app in a weak moment, but you can’t un-tell someone who already knows. That’s the thing a blocker can never give you: not a wall, but a witness you’d have to look in the eye.

Your Clamp only ever sees a category and a count.

We’ll say this loud — here and everywhere else on this site: your Clamp doesn’t get an app name, a website, a screenshot, or your history. They see a count by category — never which app it was or what was on the screen. A number, by category. That’s the whole report. The app sorts activity into a category right on your phone, and that label is the only thing we keep and the only thing your Clamp ever sees. Exactly what we do and don’t see →