CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Despite nearly 25,000 supporters, a public campaign asking McDonald’s and Starbucks to install anti-pornography filters on their in-store free Wi-Fi networks has so far been unsuccessful.
The “Porn Free Wi-Fi” campaign, organized by the Internet safety group Enough is Enough (EIE), is urging the fast-food and coffee giants to implement Internet filters in their U.S. stores to stop customers from accessing or distributing child pornography and graphic adult pornography via their free Internet connections.
“The ‘Porn Free Wi-Fi’ campaign is not just about protecting our children from viewing hard-core pornography using public hotspots — it’s also about limiting the safe haven that open Wi-Fi creates for sexual predators,” said Donna Rice Hughes, EIE’s CEO.
EIE sent letters to McDonald’s and Starbucks in April 2014 applauding both businesses for proactively implementing Internet filters in their U.K. stores. McDonald’s U.K. website claims it was the first company to join a family-friendly Wi-Fi filtering initiative called Mumsnet. Earlier in 2014, Starbucks in the U.K. joined an industry-wide public Wi-Fi filtering effort called “Friendly Wi-Fi.”
Hughes noted other major chains, like Chick-fil-A and Panera, already filter their free Internet access voluntarily.
McDonald’s has continued a dialogue with EIE, Hughes said, but in the more than seven months since the letter exchange neither McDonald’s nor Starbucks has added filters to their U.S. stores. (TAB)
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