O2 spends £4.5m to launch Bluebook

In an attempt to promote the new features of its free Bluebook service, O2 has committed to spend £4.5 million on a marketing campaign spanning TV, cinema and print media. The company claims that this relaunch of the service, first seen over 18 months ago, has been significantly improved so that users' text and photo messages are now automatically backed up on an O2 website. The company claims that this saved content can be filed, edited or displayed in online albums that can be shared with friends. However, this service might look to some as little more than a ploy by O2 to reduce subscriber churn, given that Bluebook users cannot transfer their saved content to another service provider.

Bluebook also suffered an embarrassing security failure last month that enabled registered users to view other user's messages and phone numbers simply by changing the message ID number in URLs used to access messages on the site. The company said the loophole was fixed within days of it being reported.

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