Orange upsets Porsche owners club

ONE OF the victims of yesterday's closure of Orange's Smartgroups social network was a Porsche 924 owners club. Their 90,000 message database was deleted over the weekend of 18th-19th November by Orange.

An Orange spokeswoman explained to the INQ that the reason for this action lay with the fact that no new messages had been posted on the section for months.

Which seems entirely reasonable save for the fact that the group was already trying to migrate its users elsewhere.

Deleting the Porsche group just days before the absolutely final deadline (30th November) means the club hasn't been able to take advantage of a special migration tool offered by Mailspaces.

The INQ would be personally wary of upsetting a group of 1,000 Porsche users. Never mind their obvious disposable incomes, what companies do they run?

Bizarrely, the group may have found an unlikely ally in the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

This is meant to prevent terrorism but it does require ISPs not to delete message bases. So Orange could possibly fall victim to the Grim RIPA over the move. µ

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