Porn, cocaine and weapons accessible on most public Wi-Fi networks

More than half the UK’s public Wi-Fi services allow access to online websites selling porn, cocaine and knives.

According to research by security firm Adaptive Mobile, one third of the UK’s cafés and restaurants have no age verification filters in place. The study found that one in five failed to block access to online sex dating sites such as AdultFriendFinder.com.

Furthermore, 80% of cafés and restaurants provide free access to drug-related content like ILoveCocaine.com.

While Wi-Fi hotspots at government-owned property and public places scored highest in filtering out content, one third of government sites allowed full access to online weapons stores.

Graeme Coffey, vice-president of product strategy and business development at AdaptiveMobile, said:

“In the last two years there have been two convergent trends: a big increase in public Wi-Fi or ‘hospitality Wi-Fi’, and greater access to smartphones, gaming consoles and tablets with a Wi-Fi capability, the kind of device a child could have.

“Whilst hotels are predominantly private places, where a ‘no filtering’ policy may be appropriate, hotel lobbies, cafés and restaurants are more public and the content policy should reflect this. It is certainly neither a simple nor a ‘one size fits all’ matter.

“Most people will instinctively block adult content when it comes to filtering, but what these results show is that we should also be looking at content related to drugs and violence which are just as harmful but frequently overlooked.”