Phucking phones....

[cosmolinguist]

My phone contract is nearly up, and I've been dying to get a new phone because mine's going all weird (not loading web pages until you hard-reset it, randomly restarting itself, losing mobile signal for no reason, etc).

I can get a new phone (and a cheaper tariff) as soon as I get back from Brighton next week, and I've been looking forward to that.

But I just got this text from O2 that makes me want to look for another phone company (though I suppose they're all shit in their own special ways).

O2: With BlackBerry, we're changing the way you access age restricted websites on your smartphone. You don't need to do anything now but in the future if you want to access 18+ websites, you'll need to age verify by calling 61018, free (you'll need your credit card to hand as proof of age).

Fuck. That. I don't know if any of the websites I try to access on my phone are age-restricted, but that's hardly the point. "You don't need to do anything now"; indeed, so why can't it stay that way?

Also I'm dubious of why a lot of things are "age restricted" anyway: LGBT stuff is notoriously likely to be blocked (the recent row with a US bi group and Google has at its base the problem that Google think any search for "bisexual" is likely to be porn).

Anyway O2 certainly don't need my credit card details. They have no need of them.

It sounds like a good time to shop around (if I can manage the grimness that phone-shopping is).