New McDonald’s Wi-Fi Policy Blocks Adult Entertainment Sites
McDonald’s patrons are no longer able to stream adult entertainment while eating their Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets thanks to a new corporate Wi-Fi filtering policy.
Adult film site access has been blocked from all corporate-owned McDonald’s locations where Wi-Fi is available already, and the filtering option is also available to franchisees.
Fortune reports that the move to block customers from using McDonald’s free Wi-Fi to view porn came after years of public pressure, including efforts from the internet safety advocacy group, Enough is Enough.
“We are pleased to share that Wi-Fi filtering has been activated in the majority of McDonald’s nearly 14,000 restaurants nationwide, improving upon the restaurant experience for our customers,” a McDonald’s representative told Fortune.
“This change came after thousands of concerned citizens signed a petition asking for #PornFreeWiFi from McDonald’s and Starbucks, which was part of a larger campaign conducted by Enough is Enough in partnership with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation,” Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said in an official statement. “While Starbucks has yet to respond or take action, I commend McDonald’s for adopting a socially responsible corporate measure that ensures its customers enjoy safe, public space free from pornography.”
McDonald’s rolled out its new Wi-Fi policy in the first quarter of 2016, and it was automatically applied to all corporate-owned restaurants in the United States. Since McDonald’s only owns and operates about 10 percent of its restaurants, that initially left more than 12,000 of the over 14,000 McDonald’s locations in the United States without the new porn-blocking Wi-Fi policy in effect.
According to Business Insider, about 90 percent of those restaurants offer free Wi-Fi access.
Since the initial roll out of the new anti-porn Wi-Fi policy, McDonald’s has made the filtering option available to all franchisees.
“Now the majority of McDonald’s restaurants will offer safer Wi-Fi for their patrons,” Hawkins said of the new Wi-Fi policy, although hard numbers regarding the number of McDonald’s franchisees that have yet to adopt the porn-free Wi-Fi policy are not currently available.
According to a release from Enough is Enough, McDonald’s is the latest in a list of companies, including Panera Bread and Chick-fil-A, to block access to adult film sites via free on-site Wi-Fi.
Other companies that offer free Wi-Fi access to patrons have yet to take any steps to block access to pornography.
According to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, thousands of people signed a petition asking McDonald’s and Starbucks for porn-free Wi-Fi, but Starbucks has not yet responded or implemented any filters.
“I’ve asked Starbucks employees whether they’ve had problems with customers in stores watching porn,” Hughes told the Post. “And they’ve said, yes, that they sometimes have to tap customers on the shoulder.”
“We don’t have a specific policy on what customers can and cannot access on our free in-store Wi-Fi.” #PornFreeWifi @Starbucks
— Enough Is Enough (@EIETweets) June 2, 2015
Hughes has also been unsuccessful in attempts to convince Subway to implement a porn-blocking policy.
“Through your current unfiltered internet access, Subway is allowing patrons to view illegal child pornography and even seek opportunities to sexually exploit children or teens,” Hughes wrote to Subway during the Jared Fogle child porn scandal. “None of these scenarios match the family-friendly environment that you have worked so hard to create.”
What would you do if you saw the person next to you at McDonald’s streaming adult entertainment on their phone or laptop?
[Photo by AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes]
