Call 61818 to control web access on your mobile.

Parental Control is a service we offer to help parents to protect their children while they’re online. It enables us to restrict children’s web access via their mobile to a limited number of sites, which are suitable for children. We make sure that the providers of these sites moderate any chat rooms offered to make them as safe as possible.

Call 61018 to block 18+ content.

To protect our younger customers, we assume that all users are under-18. In effect, when you get a new mobile, before you’ll be able to view any 18+ content, you’ll have to prove you’re old enough. You should check your child’s phone is set at the right level by phoning the Age Verification automated service on 61018. Simply dial the number and follow the prompts. This is especially important with a ‘hand-me-down’ phone, which could have been switched to the 18+ setting by its previous owner.It’s worth noting that even though setting the phone to the under-18 setting will block a child’s access to 18+ content, this is limited to those sites, games or services where the content providers have a commercial relationship with O2. Services offered on the worldwide web are not blocked unless you activate Parental Control.To restrict web access, you can ring the automated service on 61818 and follow the prompts. For more information on this, see the Parental Control section above.

Call 1300 to keep phone location private.

When you buy your child a new mobile phone or pass down a used one, you should check the location based settings on the phone by dialling 1300, an automated response number. You’ll then be able to select from a menu of four different privacy settings. To have maximum privacy for your child, select option 4. You can then check and change this setting as often as you like, by dialling 1300 from the mobile.

Forward to 7726 to report Spam.

If you or your child is receiving nuisance Spam text messages, the best thing you can do, unless you’re sure it’s a genuine message, is simply not respond to it. Instead, you should forward the spam to us on 7726. We’ll then investigate the message and take any necessary action we can, consulting the specialists at our Nuisance Call Bureau. If the message seems like a scam – a 'win a holiday' or something similar, then it will usually have a response phone number to ring. In this instance, O2 can bar the number to prevent customers from losing money by dialling it.

Reply STOP to stop unwanted subscription texts.

Sometimes when customers reply to a text offer and forget to read the small print, they find that they’ve signed up to an unwanted premium rate subscription. For example, we often hear from parents whose children have signed up to a new ringtone service – the result being that they as parents end up unwittingly paying out the money for this each month. Luckily, services like these are all very easy to cancel. To stop unwanted subscription texts, simply reply STOP.