If you do not like a company and you choose to not buy products from them then the Boycott app allows you to avoid them, but we want to look into this app a little further, please do read on for our explanation.

The Boycott app is available for iOS with the Android version coming soon, and this application is all about organising your very own consumer spending, as well as supporting causes that you really do care about.

The app itself allows users to check the structure of a company and ownership of any product; the app also traces the product back to its parent company with the stunning interactive family tree diagram.

Features include contact data for brands and companies etc; it can scan major retail barcodes such as EAN13, UPC-E, EAN8, UPC-A and so forth.

The app allows users to join a campaign, which helps a cause you care about, just scan a product barcode and the Buycott app will find all the details on that company brand and who owns the company.

The Buycott app is all well and good, and to be honest we do not know how this works in other countries such as USA, but here in the UK major companies use permanent markers or stickers to hide the barcodes.

We have been to a few shops such as HMV for example and notice that a lot of its product barcodes have been blanked out, so how would this work, as the Buycott app needs to scan a code.

It is all well and good having an app that does the job well but it will only work if there is a barcode to scan. Companies blanking out bar codes all started when the popular Red Laser app was released, they realised that consumers could scan a barcode of say a DVD and then the Red Laser app would let you know where it is selling for a lower price.

If you see a DVD for £10 in one company and the app said another company is selling it £8, it stands to reason you would leave that shop and buy else where. This is why companies have started to blank out barcodes, and this is where the Buycott app would not work at all.

Please let us know if you have come across a shop where the barcode has been blanked out?

If you want to try out the Buycott app please do so by visiting the App Store.