Virgin unblocks shooting websites

Kate Gatacre

May 09, 2013

Following talks with BASC, people using Virgin mobile phones will now be able to visit shooting websites. Complex under-18 filters, which are the default setting on Virgin Mobile phones, meant that shooters were unable to access websites that had anything to do with shooting, including Shooting Times and BASC.

However, following discussions between BASC and Virgin Mobile, the issue is being resolved. A spokesman from BASC told Shooting Times: “Lawful shooting sports have been caught up unnecessarily by these automatic blocks.
We welcome Virgin mobile’s positive approach to removing unwarranted censorship and hope their example will go a long way towards persuading others in the mobile industry to follow their lead.”

Conor O’Gorman, policy development manager for BASC, explained that while it was possible for the mobile user to change their settings and remove the default under-18 age filter in a matter of hours, this was only treating the symptoms and not the cause: “The solution is to modify the settings on the network filters so that the websites of BASC, Shooting Times and many others are automatically white-listed by mobile networks for under-18s to visit.

The rest of this article appears in the 8th May issue of Shooting Times.