Lessons learnt this week: ranting in 140 characters can be frustrating.

O2, in their infinite wisdom, decided on Thursday to push out some age verification shit and block websites it deems 'unsuitable' for under 18s.

I discovered this the fun way - whilst sat on the loo trying to read Jem's website.  Apparently I am no longer allowed to do this.  Does occasional swearing and talk of breastfeeding make it that unsuitable for minors?  fuck knows.  B3ta's also blocked, but that's a lot less surprising. (as a side note, if I swear more (is that even possible?!) will I get blocked too...?)

So many things wrong with the way they've gone about this though:

1. NO PRIOR WARNING/NOTICE for customers.  ffs, you can send me a billion spammy texts about using my phone abroad, etc etc, but you can't send one saying "in xx weeks time we will start filtering adult content, please verify your age if you don't want a disruption in service"
2. Seemingly random selection of websites getting filtered.  I don't look at 'adult sites' on my phone, so if this really was only blocking porn, I'd probably have never realised or especially cared about it.
3. using some random 3rd party website for the verification part...

Yes, if I want to verify my age, I need to do so by handing over my credit card details!  Or so says the web page I'd never heard of which loaded in place of where I wanted to go.   Oh, it happens to have an o2 logo on it.  DING DING DING, go the scam warning bells in my head.  Am I being phished? Is a fake Nigerian prince going to run off with all my money? Apparently not in this case, but urgh.

Never mind that I have a contract sim, which you legally have to be over 18 to take out.  No, say o2, you still need to verify your age because lots of people take out contract phones for their kids.  Yeah, and none of those kids will think of getting a parent/friend to do the age verification bit for them as well...

Mind you, if there's one thing I've learnt from work in the past six months it's that mobile carriers are entirely lacking in both common sense and competence.  O2 at least do man their twitter account, which kept someone very busy on Thursday sending replies to the many rants aimed in their direction..

tags: grr