AIBU to think O2 parental controls should block BBC news headlines & TFL?

[twoyoghurts]

DS has an O2 smartphone and as I didn't want him to stumble across anything pornographic etc, I enabled parental controls. This is meant to restrict 18+ content. However, now he can't view various sites that are useful to him. For instance, he can't look at the BBC news headlines, and he can't use the Transport for London journey planner. I've queried this with customer services and have been told there's nothing they can do. If I want him to have access to those sites, my only option is to switch off parental controls altogether.

Is it the same with other providers? Thinking of switching.

I thought you were saying that it should. Which would be VU unless you think underground travel is damaging to young minds.

You are of course being totally reasonable and O2 must be able to fix this?

Can you use the phone's own controls instead?

I had this with virgin - couldn't view pub food menus. They are even more pfb than we are!

You might be able to use the phone's controls to allow white listed only sites: BBC, Wikipedia, TfL, school site etc.

I didn't know phones had their own controls. Where should I look? It's an HTC Desire S, so quite old (inherited from me).

Parental controls are bollocks. I had to get them taken off my phone so I could read a blog that had the word shit in one of the entries. The only reliable way to avoid stuff you shouldn't see online is to stay off the internet.

Mumsnet is no doubt blocked because of how often the c word and f words occur.

Also will the O2 filters work when he's on wifi instead of 3G?

He's fine on Wifi - we have parental controls set on that too, but it's more sensible.

However, when he's standing at the bus stop he needs to use 3G.