Naughty Orange

On the matter of mobile phones and such, I received a customer care call from Orange last week asking me to upgrade my mobile Internet hardware. I have been perfectly happy with the USB dongle thingy and it’s done the job I’ve asked of it, so wasn’t particularly interested. What’s to upgrade, after all? A USB dongle isn’t exactly an exciting piece of kit at the best of times.

I was assured that the upgrade would be smaller, neater and free. Also, my plan wasn’t being used to its full extent, so I could alter that one and save £10 per month. That’s fine by me, so I went along with it. Now, I’m no fool, I know exactly what’s going on here; I’m now tied into another year of contract. But, as I fully intended to carry on anyway and was happy enough with the service, doing so for a tenner less a month makes perfect sense.

Having received the kit and registered the new SIM with Orange to get it working (now that’s a story in itself – why can’t they have a neat online system to save waiting in a call queue?), I decided to test it out by going to some of my regularly accessed sites. Imagine my irritation when I clicked onto my webmail only to find that I am barred as it is adult rated and my account has Orange Safeguard applied to it – all to protect the children, naturally, from unsuitable content. I didn’t get as far as the Devil’s Kitchen.

Now, chaps, should anyone from Orange be reading this, this is a business account we are talking about, not something you dish out to children – they don’t, therefore, need protecting and I sure as hell don’t. I use it for business purposes; mostly for checking my email. While I use POP most of the time, I need webmail to clear the junk off the server from time to time. Besides, a filter that blocks something so innocuous is likely to be a frustration elsewhere, too. A search on Orange Safeguard reveals a number of other annoyed users highlighting false positives. I mean, if you are going to have an X-Rating filter, the least you can do is make sure that it only filters X-rated content and not such things as webmail.

I went to my account settings and, sure enough, I had a bar applied – a bar that I had never requested. I tried changing it. I couldn’t and had to call the Orange call centre. Yes, indeed, I am over eighteen, by a long way. And, yes, being a big boy now I am capable of navigating the Internet without nanny holding my hand.

All of this in its own small way, highlights what has gone so terribly wrong with our society. Why is it that every Tom Dick and Harry thinks that protecting children is their business and why, frankly, do they think me incapable of managing my own affairs? What do they think I’m going to do, hand it to some kid and tell them to go surfing porn sites? FFS!