O2 boots up boobies blocker

O2 fails again

I have in my mail file a lovely email dated last June from the Information Commissioner assuring me that O2 have promised never ever to send me any further SMS messages after their spamfest fiasco last year where they even pissed-off the writer of Father Ted.

At 12:05 this afternoon I got an O2 SMS message...

I'm no longer with O2. I left last summer having suffered their crap service for a year or so. I expect this censoring issue will leave them with fewer customers still.

Google Translate?

They're blocking Google Translate, as apparently that's 18+ content. O2 are bloody useless!

Epic Fail

I can go in to a newsagent and buy a copy of the Sun for 30p no questions asked

www.page3.com on O2 and they want me to prove my age.

Two Pink Floyd albums....

..they made two?

I was ready to kill myself after hearing Dark Side of pretention.....

Muppets

Their mobile verification system is "Server Unavailable" and the one on the website says "Sorry we cannot send the verification message at the moment. Please try again later, alternatively our staff at any O2 shop will be happy to help if you bring proof of age and ID"

No warning at all, verification systems down, huge fail. The people who came over to O2 for iPhones can all leave and go back to sensible networks now.

T-Mobile Too

T-Mobile do this too. When I got my new smartphone off them, I fould that I couldn't access e-Buddy, it was rated 18+ (wtf? Its a chat application).

T-Moble wanted me to pay a £1 charge via credit card, which they'd refund within 24hrs, to prove I was 18+. Note its specific, credit cards. Debit cards need not apply. I don't have a credit card, by personal choice, only a debit card.

In the end, rather than losing my contract because this restriction was not made known to me when I signed up, they agreed that I could take my drivers licence or passport, birth certificate, and 2 utility bills in my name to my nearest T-Mobile store, and they would validate my age there.

...is required

So I morally object to internet filtering... next thing you know, you're trying to find a bus time and the bus company website is randomly blocked.... I might be paranoid, but can you really trust them?

The page essentially says they need my CC number to charge me £1 and return £2.50... why would they need that when I pay by DD and have done for 5 years?

So I rang up O2 (on 202) and had a whinge. Apparently it's a "technical issue" that has happened to a fair few customers, so am hoping that enough people are complaining that they will be removing the filter from people that can be shown to be old enough.

*Sigh*

It blocked me from viewing the salacious delights of

Poker chips. Not gambling. Not even poker. But stopped me visiting a site about collectable poker chips.

I knew my hobby was a bit anal - but not that type!

I assumed it was some sort of hacked redirect.. now I see it is not. Hmm.

Kindly <censor> off.

It's always "for the cheeeldren", and you're obviously supposed to feel bad if you object.

If I was a parent (I'm not) I'd be happy to have the *option* of such a service, but would NOT and DO NOT expect it on by default. Protecting my child would by my concern, not theirs. Nanny off!

O2 (and other carriers) should stick to being the telecoms/data provider, responsible for provision of service, NOT enforcing rules and censorship. By all means provide us with the ABILITY to restrict sites/age related content, but TELL us about it first, and allow us to opt in. Don't force it upon me, or make me opt out.

As a comparison, I don't see my water company forcibly installing new pipes to my house ("part of their service"), for no charge ("all part of our 'added value' service!"), without my consent - and then charging me to remove them after I find they stop me opening my doors etc due to bad layout.

So, O2 - in a nutshell, do not opt me in by default. Do NOT charge me for the priviledge of opting out of a service I never signed up for in the first place (I don't see it anywhere in my t's & c's, and nor do I see Bango (or any other company) involved in the t's & c's - and we now know they'll be mining surfing habits for revenue gain etc). As mentioned, their own site states you'll only get a £2.50 refund ONCE - implying they KNOW their system can/may block you again, resulting in a fee.

I rang O2 C/S earlier, in a less than good mood, and the C/S agent concerned has apparently sent a form to their backoffice team to remove the blocking on my account FoC. This however, may take 48 hours, but I hope will be logged on my account, so that if I am blocked again, I will be able to complain (again).

I am now considering switching provider (possibly even to a more expensive one) who will not adversely interfere with my internet usage. "Fair usage" does not (to my knowledge) involve "sites *we* allow you to see, not sites you might want to see".

I may only pay £20 pcm (£240 p/a) but that's £240 that doesn't involve £1 fiddly payments every so often. I'll gladly spend £240 p/a for a hassle free experience elsewhere. 48 hours - the clock started ticking about 4 hours ago.

No SSL

Also noticed that the page you put your CC into is not HTTPS://

Not great O2.

Contract phones

I could see the logic for prepaid phones, but for contract phones where you have to be 18 in order to have taken out the contract in the first place surely there should be no restriction?

If you are taking out a contract for your kids, then there should be a separate option at signup time to turn on the porn filter.

no b3ta either

O2 are saying that you can pop into a shop with photo id to prove you're over 18. I'm gonna pop in after work and try and point out that my monthly direct debit they're happy to take, and my details they needed to set up the contract should point out quite clearly that I'm over 18. And having worked building anti-porn filters in the past I'm quite comfortable discussing pr0n access on my mobile, let's see if the staff in their shop are.

Think yourselves lucky

If that demented bitch Jackie Smith was still the fuhrer you would be put on list 99 and required to attend regular psychiatric treatment for your evil perversion just for asking to have the porn block removed.

Don't you understand how disgusting and perverted you are?

There is porn everywhere!

Everybody must attend their local NHS trust be fitted with a blindfold before they are allowed to go out in public! If you want the blindfold off in any public place or shop you will have to prove your age with a government issued ID card. Anyone asking to have their blindfold taken off within 100 miles of a school will have to ring a bell and loudly announce "paedo approaching, lock up your children" whenever they are in any public place.

Opera Mini

Bypasses their rubbish altogether. I could take my ID to their shop (only having debit cards), or use Opera for six months and take my ID to someone elses shop and give my nice contract money to someone else.

Block pr0n...

...and reduce your network overload problems. Simples.

For the Kids? Bollocks!

So is it a surprise that O2 launch a nanny system in the last few weeks of the financial year?

Most age verification tools will allow a debit card transaction whereby they will make a deposit and then retake the deposit (normally a penny)

Its obvious that the motive of O2 is to get 19 million customers to pay £1 each as a cash influx into the business. It's transparent and sickening.

The £2.50 credit is not a refund, it's money back on a network for which they have already invested.

Their stance of "We want to ensure that children are not accessing adult content" is a pure smokescreen.

Did they want to make sure that I'm an adult when setting up a Direct debit for £90 per month?

No

Do they check my age before sending me a new handset?

No

THIS IS PURELY A WAY FOR O2 TO INCREASE PROFITS AS THEY HIT APRIL 1ST.

Scumbag tactics for such a large company.

Sanity

Ok....fixed line requires an "adult" paying bills to get broadbad....yes 16 year olds can get this...BUT if they are classed as adults (Ohhh they can have you know what) then ok.....THEY take the resonabilty as EVERY adult in the UK does, to do the correct thing and make sure little Jonny does not have access to the www as they would not take the kid to a pole dancing club, one would hope!

mobiles are purcahsed to keep in conact with little jonny by mum and dad.......and if they then have free rain over the net this is bad. It is not possible to block xxx as it is from jonny's PC where they do have control? Simple answer is a credit card check.

Opt in is always better than opt out.............

the main issue is you should always be able to opt out of what the company wants to harvest (not opt out of the law) and still get the web, app that you want to use and quite often pay for!

Tit....

I was really pissed off they would do this to a 30 year old man having had an O2 contract since it was BT Cellnet. Then I thought about it, did the silly CC dance and essentially O2 just paid me 1.50 to look at boobs.. great..

anyone want to give me a fiver and I'll go and buy the daily sport too..

blocks apps too

I've been having trouble using a popular gay dating app on the iPhone for the last day or so (when did the block come on?). The app kept just hanging and I thought it was the app's fault. When I tried accessing the dating site using Mobile Safari, I got the age verification messaging for the first time.

So you'll have a chunk of users who are using apps rather than phone browsers who can't see the messaging from O2 at all.

I just asked for my PUK - I've had problems with pre-paying for international data where they credit the add-on the *following billing cycle*, ending up with me being charges extoritionate rates for mobile roaming in the US when I thought I was covered, and having a useless bundle of pre-paid data a month after my trip. Add in crap mobile reception and many dropped calls, this is the last straw for me.

We were taken down by o2's filter on Monday

We're a brand new UK startup that's all about Fresh Local Food and Drink.

On Friday, Apple featured us on the front page of the Apple Store. We were thrilled.

We learned today - after 3 days of massively reduced traffic and a fear we'd got something very wrong, that we'd fallen foul of o2 censorship. Goodness only knows why. On Monday o2 shut down our iPhone app for all customers on it's network; by blocking our web-app framework. The framework that powers us, our App lost all functionality and our initial surge of interest - 17,500 downloads in our first 2 weeks, tailed off.

I'll stop there. I'm furious but helpless in the circumstances. They apologised for their mistake late today - they'll have us up and running tomorrow. Well woopy-bloody-do!

A title

If it worked I wouldn't be so annoyed, but even image search on google is blocked!

O2 blocking harmless sites

So I am a long-term O2 customer. Today I click on an email link in my smartphone email to take me to a completely harmless, bog-standard dating service and up pops the Age-Verification rubbish. So I reluctantly hand over my details to this company I've never heard of and get an SMS letting me know I've been verified.

Now that's wonderful - except it still won't connect. I am re-directed to O2's woeful wap.o2.co.uk page when I click the link. So the age verification process still doesn't stop O2 re-writing your links and actually appears to not work.

Good job O2 - this is why people wish mobile operators become dumb pipes.

They're not the only ones

Somewhere in the depths of Larrington Towers lies a scarcely-used Vodaphone dongle. It wouldn't let me upload my holiday snaps to Flickr, and wouldn't even let me verify my age online. I bought the bloody thing with a credit card.

Vodaphone are a shower of dunces.

So Unfair!

There I was half way though a very enjoyable self abuse session at work and the porn blocker came on. This made me very angry so I rang up the O2 man, he was very nice though and let me finish myself off while he stayed on the phone.. (And If u dont have a credit card it takes 2 bloody days to get your mobile smut back!)

Obvious I know

Free the O 2!!!

Paris. If you have to ask, you're not 18.

Quit whinging

Who does the network belong to, you or O2? You probably got your phone subsidized as part of contract too, so you don't really own that either. Speaking of your contract, does it say "you have a right to receive free smut" anywhere in there? I thought not. If you don't like it, build your own cellular network. Otherwise, just pay your porno fee and quit complaining. If I have to deal with any more of you wankers I'm going to throw up.

Has anyone actually done this yet?

I have, and like all O2 schemes, it doesn't work. Everything caught by the filter redirects to wap.o2.co.uk.

I am Mr 48 hours...

Well, late yesterday evening I received an SMS stating "We've confirmed your age and you can now access 18 rated content. To change this setting call 61018 free".

Except of course that calling 61018 will require a card (if I for some mad reason enable the filter again).

The "18 rated content" I wanted (which caused all this for me) was a cartoon about the LHC.

After I got the SMS I wound up getting redirected to the O2 website (as mentioned above), and I've had to reconnect to the mobile network (Android > Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Network) before it started behaving.

Age Verification Fail

Just went to go through the whole farce of removing a block that should never have been there in the first place only to be told by the website my personal mobile was on a business account and I needed to speak to my account manager.

Went into a store. No luck. I need to speak to my non-existent account manager. Useless bunch of cretins.