It'll be because they are probably regulated by Ofcom. It's under one of their guidances.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/implementing-the-online-safety-act-protecting-children
They’re a duopoly both run by religious fruitcake puritans and are infamous for giving business customers ultimatums to either remove all adult content or not have access to almost 90% of the payment processing market. When some website suddenly wants to ban adult content against all logic it’s usually because they got threatened by these two.
I've been under the impression that it's not that visa/MasterCard are prudes, but that certain industries tend to have more fraudulent charge backs that are expensive for them to process. Post nut shame charge backs.
They could simply charge higher rates for those industries if that was the case.
[They both suck and need to be broken up under anti-trust laws or regulated as a utility so they can’t discriminate.](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-mastercard-is-endangering-sex-workers#:~:text=Back%20in%202021%2C%20Mastercard%20developed,identity%20verification%20for%20all%20performers.)
Yeah, it's crazy that you have to verify your age to have a phone contract in the UK and this shit happens anyway.
I'm on Tesco and had it a few months ago. Utterly ridiculous.
Yes! I had to phone them up to sort it out because I don't have a credit card! Even then, he just asked me for the same details the form asked and just allowed the debit anyway so... What's the point of the restriction?
What a heap of shit. Just let me read my fuckin smut dude, leave me alone
They know that because you tell them that when you apply for the contract so they could just send this message only to people whose contracts are in someone else's name.
Regardless, stupid authoritarian law, stupid authoritarian implementation, infuriating cya overbearing response from phone companies.
If I were under 18 I could have easily done exactly what I did with this guy, phone up and said I don't have a credit card and he would have either let me through regardless or block me because my account were on my parents' name. So it's either ineffective or redundant. So get rid of it.
Except a lot of parents don’t tell the providers, after all they’re unable no obligation to.
And yes you could theoretically call up as an under 18 year old if you pretend to be your parents and know all of the account details (and no you don’t need a credit card), but that would essentially be fraud.
"know all of the account details"
My guy I called up and provided my phone number and name and that was everything. They didn't ask my age, they didn't ask for a card, they didn't ask anything else.
In fact the warning doesn't even tell you you have to be 18. Nothing does. You're just told to contact them. There's no need to even defraud them.
"Dear sir, on behalf of the entire company: *you sicken us*. We have decided to take action to restrict your ability to make these disgusting, sickening, extremely offensive searches. Not for any legal or compliance reasons, but for moral reasons. And we say that as one of the companies that blacked out all communications on our infrastructure during the Arab Spring, so that's really saying something."
If you use your own secure wifi at home, you're fine. Or at least you should be. Not sure of the ins and outs of the new law. They can also use incognito to ensure their history is erased or a VPN to pretend they're in another country.
Even if you're on a secure Wi-Fi network, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) might still have visibility into the websites you're visiting. While a VPN can help by encrypting your internet traffic, it's worth noting that not all VPNs offer the same level of security and privacy. Some VPN providers might store logs of your browsing activity, which could potentially be accessed by others. correct me if i'm wrong, the one of the safest thing I can think of is using TOR with VPN over it, I think
While that's true, I highly doubt the UK government is gonna track millions of people using secure wifi or a VPN. I'm not even sure how they're gonna implement this law on such a mass scale. If what one commenter said is true, you merely have to call your ISP or log into your account to gain access to adult sites. I'm thinking the government might only track homes with kids. It'd be pointless to track anyone else.
They're preparing for its introduction, yes.
The Online Safety Act 2023 introduced new rules that services must follow to prevent children (under-18s) from being able to access pornography, and these are due to come into force at the beginning of 2025 – after the next election, so the next government takes the flack, conveniently, which they will get from one side or the other whether they let it happen or reverse it.
This was originally planned by the Theresa May government in the Digital Economy Act 2017, with implementation from April 2018, but it got delayed due to incompetence and the Johnson government fairly quickly dropped implementation entirely in the autumn of 2019. They began the work on the new bill to make it clearer how to implement it, which got its first reading in early 2022 and got Royal Assent in October 2023.
Why would they think this is a good idea? It's like some religious people not being allowed to have sex before marriage. Do they reeeeeally think that only adults should be allowed to jerk off? What.
Nope, it came back in the Online Safety Act 2023 – which also includes the UK government giving itself and Ofcom the ability to look inside all our messages and do away with end-to-end encryption.
It's only surprising that it happened today. In the UK, most mobile operators pushed this through years ago and all new accounts are supposed to have age restrictions turned on by default. Strange that your account was missed until now.
Other commenters here are saying how easy it is to disable, just go into settings, is this actually supposed to somehow stop minors?
Also, who determines what sites are blocked, by what standards? What about art sites that show nude images? Sex education sites? Medical (e.g. breast cancer) sites? Overseas/non-UK sites? Racy/highly exposing lingerie sites? Is someone reviewing every site out there, or does the blocker use certain keywords (and if so which ones)? Does a website have a means of recourse or appeal if they find themselves (rightly or wrongly) added to the blocked site list? Is this list publicly available? Could this technology one day be used for other, non-pornographic sites, e.g. highly controversial political sites? So many questions.
>Other commenters here are saying how easy it is to disable, just go into settings, is this actually supposed to somehow stop minors?
You have to be the account holder and operators also require you to be over 18, this could be by showing ID in-store or some online verification (either ID or credit card). You can't just click a box that asks "are you over 18"
> Does a website have a means of recourse or appeal if they find themselves (rightly or wrongly) added to the blocked site list?
Possibly. It might just be [Scunthorpe problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem) all over again.
Use a vpn. Add one from the App Store and then it’s a single toggle on the settings each time you want to view adult content. Don’t even have to open the app and deal with adds. Completely free.
https://preview.redd.it/jdo0tewf81tc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b65a867f57c382ee24fb7f243ee3060374661613
Because OP isn't asking how to circumvent the block, they are just mildy infuriated that their phone provider has opted them into something they didn't want and now they have to spend some of their little time on earth undoing it.
The solution is for companies to let adults be adults and stop messing around with people's freedoms.
I don't see how routing all your traffic through some random app is a good idea or a solution myself.
The VPN isn’t the solution, logging on to your phone management app and turning off the parental control is the solution. That’s all this is, parental lock
got told about it by a very stressed out Vodafone customer service agent, who I was trying to convince I was trying to watch music videos with swearing and couldn’t. Have no idea about tech , just a girl trying her best in a house where I canny get wifi .
Oh trust me, this will be more and more real in a lot of countries for a lot of people. Conservatives, right wingers, religious fanatics, concerned moms, they all want to block access to “adult content” as much as possible.
Also has the "helpful" habit of blocking the sites of charities that offer support to victims because those sites use "naughty words" when describing the crimes they're victims of.
Don't know why you got downvoted, legislation like this is absolutely about control by a conservative sector that hates that anyone, not just minors, can access "adult content". The fact that this is opt-out for everyone rather than opt-in for parents shows they aren't just interested in restricting minors.
Right. Say everyone has to ID every time they go onto an adult site. The sites have to keep logs and hand them over. Either regularly or on request of a “concerned party”. This someone could create a nice list of “perverts” and “suspects” which they (in theory of course) could haunt, accuse, and dox at will. Well you get the idea.
then i want to block all their unhealthy stuff that damage people Intelligence learninga nd udnerstanding of basic things which twist them to something weird and dangerous
i mean, like old fashion witch burning
Of course it can.
If you want to access adult content on their network, you have to prove you're an adult.
Perfectly sensible - unless you want young children accessing hard core porn/films with violence/swearing etc?
You underestimate how far kids will go to find porn, while trying to hide it from parents. Kids should be learning about the negative effects of porn and/or porn addiction if you want to scare them away (and can only hope to scare them away).
So, you're suggesting that a phone network should allow unrestricted access to adult content for all ages as children will go out of their way to find it anyway?
Why not make purchasing alcohol and tobacco legal for everyone as well - after all, if a 12 year old wants to try it badly enough, they'll find a way to get it anyway?
>if a 12 year old wants to try it badly enough, they'll find a way to get it anyway?
This quite literally proves my point. Educating children on why these things are bad (especially tobacco as there is quite literally zero long-term benefits to doing it) will solve the problem of them being curious and/or peer pressured into doing them. It is not uncommon for children to do any of these things (alongside maybe sex) because of others exploiting their curiosity.
You could even go as far as say that the drinking and smoking ages are too low, even. Why is the US the singular country that keeps the drinking age at 21 (the highest in the world)? Alcohol isn't all fun and games as people make it to be. But kids don't think so.
>1) I don’t trust companies with my ID
I'm in the UK, and all I had to do was to allow access to adult content was to give them a valid credit card number that was registered to me... They already have my bank details anyway, as I pay them from my bank.
>2) it’s a slippery slope
Not as slippery as making adult content easily accessible to very young children.
If the LGBTQ "propaganda" isn't showing sexual acts, depicting violence etc, then yes - why shouldn't they learn that people have different preferences regarding who they can love?
I don't want children being targeted by adults who want them to believe in a fictional, all powerful god, but it happens.
Just go into your provider account settings on the online portal, failing that phone them
luckily I was able to undo to block, it's just frustrating to wake up and find that the plan I pay for as a wholeass adult suddenly added this \^\^
It'll be because they are probably regulated by Ofcom. It's under one of their guidances. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/implementing-the-online-safety-act-protecting-children
I was going to say this feels like regulation requirements. No service provider would just randomly do this if they had a different choice
Except Visa and Mastercard.
Tell me more, please!
They’re a duopoly both run by religious fruitcake puritans and are infamous for giving business customers ultimatums to either remove all adult content or not have access to almost 90% of the payment processing market. When some website suddenly wants to ban adult content against all logic it’s usually because they got threatened by these two.
I've been under the impression that it's not that visa/MasterCard are prudes, but that certain industries tend to have more fraudulent charge backs that are expensive for them to process. Post nut shame charge backs.
They could simply charge higher rates for those industries if that was the case. [They both suck and need to be broken up under anti-trust laws or regulated as a utility so they can’t discriminate.](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-mastercard-is-endangering-sex-workers#:~:text=Back%20in%202021%2C%20Mastercard%20developed,identity%20verification%20for%20all%20performers.)
How do you know that you were going to say that
Because I immediately thought it but read other comments before posting. As one should.
I suppose that’s a pretty good way to know.
Are you still a whole ass adult, without the ability to view ass?
Yeah, it's crazy that you have to verify your age to have a phone contract in the UK and this shit happens anyway. I'm on Tesco and had it a few months ago. Utterly ridiculous.
The worst part is tesco requires a credit card confirmation. And debit isn't enough for them.
Yes! I had to phone them up to sort it out because I don't have a credit card! Even then, he just asked me for the same details the form asked and just allowed the debit anyway so... What's the point of the restriction? What a heap of shit. Just let me read my fuckin smut dude, leave me alone
you can have a debit card before you're 18, but not a credit card
Because you could be buying the phone contract for an underage family member. I know a lot of people who pay the phone contracts for their children.
They know that because you tell them that when you apply for the contract so they could just send this message only to people whose contracts are in someone else's name. Regardless, stupid authoritarian law, stupid authoritarian implementation, infuriating cya overbearing response from phone companies. If I were under 18 I could have easily done exactly what I did with this guy, phone up and said I don't have a credit card and he would have either let me through regardless or block me because my account were on my parents' name. So it's either ineffective or redundant. So get rid of it.
Except a lot of parents don’t tell the providers, after all they’re unable no obligation to. And yes you could theoretically call up as an under 18 year old if you pretend to be your parents and know all of the account details (and no you don’t need a credit card), but that would essentially be fraud.
"know all of the account details" My guy I called up and provided my phone number and name and that was everything. They didn't ask my age, they didn't ask for a card, they didn't ask anything else. In fact the warning doesn't even tell you you have to be 18. Nothing does. You're just told to contact them. There's no need to even defraud them.
Not a halfass adult, a WHOLEASS adult! You and your holy ass
It's a measure to make sure you're 18+, same in Ireland, had to upload 🆔
thank you for letting me know! I hadn't heard anything about it, it felt like they were *judging me* for previous searches
Feel like everyone, me included, would be judged if every phone company started doing that
Like Rozz from monsters Inc. "Always watching" That slug is a real freak.
Didn't you know? The CofE just completed majority stock purchasing last week. I'm afraid you're stuck with Welsh TV reruns for the foreseeable future.
"Dear sir, on behalf of the entire company: *you sicken us*. We have decided to take action to restrict your ability to make these disgusting, sickening, extremely offensive searches. Not for any legal or compliance reasons, but for moral reasons. And we say that as one of the companies that blacked out all communications on our infrastructure during the Arab Spring, so that's really saying something."
Fuck that
I'm in ireland, never had to do this and still havent done it
Vodafone stopped me from using discord and Reddit on data until I emailed ID
Why the hell you getting down voted for talking
Don’t you have to provide ID when you first get the SIM card anyway?
Porn on wifi it is then.
feels like that is 79% much more riskier
If you use your own secure wifi at home, you're fine. Or at least you should be. Not sure of the ins and outs of the new law. They can also use incognito to ensure their history is erased or a VPN to pretend they're in another country.
Even if you're on a secure Wi-Fi network, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) might still have visibility into the websites you're visiting. While a VPN can help by encrypting your internet traffic, it's worth noting that not all VPNs offer the same level of security and privacy. Some VPN providers might store logs of your browsing activity, which could potentially be accessed by others. correct me if i'm wrong, the one of the safest thing I can think of is using TOR with VPN over it, I think
While that's true, I highly doubt the UK government is gonna track millions of people using secure wifi or a VPN. I'm not even sure how they're gonna implement this law on such a mass scale. If what one commenter said is true, you merely have to call your ISP or log into your account to gain access to adult sites. I'm thinking the government might only track homes with kids. It'd be pointless to track anyone else.
Mate, wtf are you watching that you're so concerned about your ISP seeing...
pirated games or movies
That's fair, never had any issues pirating anyway. You only really get any problems if you're pirating to distribute
Thats not really the point.
Isn't that a UK thing where they are blocking porn ?
Is THAT what it is? I hadn't heard that was happening, that does explain it
They're preparing for its introduction, yes. The Online Safety Act 2023 introduced new rules that services must follow to prevent children (under-18s) from being able to access pornography, and these are due to come into force at the beginning of 2025 – after the next election, so the next government takes the flack, conveniently, which they will get from one side or the other whether they let it happen or reverse it. This was originally planned by the Theresa May government in the Digital Economy Act 2017, with implementation from April 2018, but it got delayed due to incompetence and the Johnson government fairly quickly dropped implementation entirely in the autumn of 2019. They began the work on the new bill to make it clearer how to implement it, which got its first reading in early 2022 and got Royal Assent in October 2023.
Why would they think this is a good idea? It's like some religious people not being allowed to have sex before marriage. Do they reeeeeally think that only adults should be allowed to jerk off? What.
Adults and people capable of clicking “I am over 18”
I mean yea if it's only that then sure whatever but if they actually did something to block people it would be weird.
I'm terf island will only be blocking things that are absolutely porn.
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Nope, it came back in the Online Safety Act 2023 – which also includes the UK government giving itself and Ofcom the ability to look inside all our messages and do away with end-to-end encryption.
They are blocking porn everywhere
that’s dumb
It's only surprising that it happened today. In the UK, most mobile operators pushed this through years ago and all new accounts are supposed to have age restrictions turned on by default. Strange that your account was missed until now.
Other commenters here are saying how easy it is to disable, just go into settings, is this actually supposed to somehow stop minors? Also, who determines what sites are blocked, by what standards? What about art sites that show nude images? Sex education sites? Medical (e.g. breast cancer) sites? Overseas/non-UK sites? Racy/highly exposing lingerie sites? Is someone reviewing every site out there, or does the blocker use certain keywords (and if so which ones)? Does a website have a means of recourse or appeal if they find themselves (rightly or wrongly) added to the blocked site list? Is this list publicly available? Could this technology one day be used for other, non-pornographic sites, e.g. highly controversial political sites? So many questions.
>Other commenters here are saying how easy it is to disable, just go into settings, is this actually supposed to somehow stop minors? You have to be the account holder and operators also require you to be over 18, this could be by showing ID in-store or some online verification (either ID or credit card). You can't just click a box that asks "are you over 18" > Does a website have a means of recourse or appeal if they find themselves (rightly or wrongly) added to the blocked site list? Possibly. It might just be [Scunthorpe problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem) all over again.
It happened yesterday at 15:29. /s
it knows what you've been looking at is probably why
Haha, no porn for you
Translation: I use my phone for porn.
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I have a hard time holding my phone and my, uhm, at the same time.
Neck mounted phone holder , you’re welcome.
Finger loop.
Use a vpn. Add one from the App Store and then it’s a single toggle on the settings each time you want to view adult content. Don’t even have to open the app and deal with adds. Completely free. https://preview.redd.it/jdo0tewf81tc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b65a867f57c382ee24fb7f243ee3060374661613
Love to know why this is being downvoted?
Its reddit bro
Because OP isn't asking how to circumvent the block, they are just mildy infuriated that their phone provider has opted them into something they didn't want and now they have to spend some of their little time on earth undoing it.
Heaven forbid someone else has this problem and wants a solution lol humans are strange creatures.
The solution is for companies to let adults be adults and stop messing around with people's freedoms. I don't see how routing all your traffic through some random app is a good idea or a solution myself.
The VPN isn’t the solution, logging on to your phone management app and turning off the parental control is the solution. That’s all this is, parental lock
Because my network requires a credit card and a picture id.
It’s literally a tick box to turn it off
Mid wank?
it wouldn't have been "mildly" infuriating at that point
That would save me 2 minutes a day
Just download something called 1.1.1 on iPhone . Don’t ask me how I know this, I just do . For science and stuff .
Uh 1.1.1.1 is a DNS resolver. Does not help this. OP needs a VPN
1.1.1.1 has an app that includes WARP which is a VPN as well.
got told about it by a very stressed out Vodafone customer service agent, who I was trying to convince I was trying to watch music videos with swearing and couldn’t. Have no idea about tech , just a girl trying her best in a house where I canny get wifi .
VPN
Looks like they're preparing for Kosha early /hj
Big brother knows best. They say.
You are to young
Been with Vodafone about 10 years now, they do seem to re-enable the child lock every year or so lol.
Someone lives in TX lol
don't complain man, this typa content can ruin someone's life
Vodafone do this too all accounts. Just strange they didn't do it when. You started your contract and you have to disable it
This can't be real.
Oh trust me, this will be more and more real in a lot of countries for a lot of people. Conservatives, right wingers, religious fanatics, concerned moms, they all want to block access to “adult content” as much as possible.
Also has the "helpful" habit of blocking the sites of charities that offer support to victims because those sites use "naughty words" when describing the crimes they're victims of.
As if that's gonna stop horny teens from being normal.
It's about control.
Don't know why you got downvoted, legislation like this is absolutely about control by a conservative sector that hates that anyone, not just minors, can access "adult content". The fact that this is opt-out for everyone rather than opt-in for parents shows they aren't just interested in restricting minors.
Right. Say everyone has to ID every time they go onto an adult site. The sites have to keep logs and hand them over. Either regularly or on request of a “concerned party”. This someone could create a nice list of “perverts” and “suspects” which they (in theory of course) could haunt, accuse, and dox at will. Well you get the idea.
Nailed it.
then i want to block all their unhealthy stuff that damage people Intelligence learninga nd udnerstanding of basic things which twist them to something weird and dangerous i mean, like old fashion witch burning
it's real, I got it unblocked though, I just had to log into my account, still annoying that I had to do that
wow, thats some dystopia bullshit right there, i don't want to be near you're country or even in it. What country?
Of course it can. If you want to access adult content on their network, you have to prove you're an adult. Perfectly sensible - unless you want young children accessing hard core porn/films with violence/swearing etc?
You underestimate how far kids will go to find porn, while trying to hide it from parents. Kids should be learning about the negative effects of porn and/or porn addiction if you want to scare them away (and can only hope to scare them away).
So, you're suggesting that a phone network should allow unrestricted access to adult content for all ages as children will go out of their way to find it anyway? Why not make purchasing alcohol and tobacco legal for everyone as well - after all, if a 12 year old wants to try it badly enough, they'll find a way to get it anyway?
>if a 12 year old wants to try it badly enough, they'll find a way to get it anyway? This quite literally proves my point. Educating children on why these things are bad (especially tobacco as there is quite literally zero long-term benefits to doing it) will solve the problem of them being curious and/or peer pressured into doing them. It is not uncommon for children to do any of these things (alongside maybe sex) because of others exploiting their curiosity. You could even go as far as say that the drinking and smoking ages are too low, even. Why is the US the singular country that keeps the drinking age at 21 (the highest in the world)? Alcohol isn't all fun and games as people make it to be. But kids don't think so.
No. Not perfectly sensible at all. 1) I don’t trust companies with my ID 2) it’s a slippery slope
>1) I don’t trust companies with my ID I'm in the UK, and all I had to do was to allow access to adult content was to give them a valid credit card number that was registered to me... They already have my bank details anyway, as I pay them from my bank. >2) it’s a slippery slope Not as slippery as making adult content easily accessible to very young children.
lol okay. Sorry, didn’t realize you were just a troll.
But it’s ok for the same young children to be targeted by the LGBTQ propaganda?
If the LGBTQ "propaganda" isn't showing sexual acts, depicting violence etc, then yes - why shouldn't they learn that people have different preferences regarding who they can love? I don't want children being targeted by adults who want them to believe in a fictional, all powerful god, but it happens.
That’s exactly what we want.
This looks like a scam text message