Porn, Prisons and WiFi – Network Safety Tips

It’s a problem that many WiFi users are familiar with – slow loading times, sluggish networks, sites that just aren’t connecting.  Many of the residents of Market Harborough, Leicestershire were seeing all these familiar symptoms.

But then they received letters from nearby Her Majesty’s Prison Gartree, once home to notorious criminals such as Ian Brady and the Krays, explaining the network slowdown: their home network bandwidth was being hijacked by prisoners who had smuggled phones into the prison.

Most of the houses effected in Market Harborough backed right onto the prison, where inmates could access hotspots setup without passwords. Residents, many of whom are retired couples, were urged to have their home internet security checked immediately. Prison officials reported that the inmates were using the internet to contact friends, family and associates outside the walls of the prison and, of course, to watch porn.

And it’s not just prisoners in the UK who love free porn – the site IndiaTimes recently reported that 33% of Indian WiFi users have admitted to using free WiFi to watch porn, while officials in Mumbai are spending time chasing piggybackers out of the stations after hours who are hogging bandwidth to you – you guessed it, more porn.

If you’re running a cafe, hotel, or other business, these stories might scare you from offering free WiFi to your customers. It shouldn’t. You can easily stop unwanted users and bandwidth hogs by using some common sense security measures with your WiFi offering.

SCHEDULING – Does your business close at 5pm? There isn’t a reason to have the guest WiFi on after that, is there? No. An easy solution to this would be to just turn off your WiFi access point….but then, are you going to remember to turn it on again the next day? Or will your employees? Especially in the food service industry, there’s an awful lot of work to get done before the first customer walks in the door. Scheduling your WiFi to turn on and off automatically during business hours is a easy and quick way to keep unwanted users off your network.

FILTERING – What’s the best way of keeping out porn sites? Stop them from coming through your router in the first place. Content filtering services keep constantly updated lists of inappropriate content – from gambling sites, to auction sites and, of course, adult sites – and stop them from reaching your network.

BANDWIDTH LIMITS – One person watching a movie can slow down your entire network. Imagine how slow connections were in an Indian train station where over 1/3 of the people were watching porn. Setting bandwidth limits keeps a network WiFi congestion free and fair for all.

Of course, you’re going to want a guest WiFi solution that combines all of these features. And it just so happens we have one handy – Stampede wifi. WE offers all the features above – automatic scheduling, bandwidth limits, and content filtering through our partnership with Digital Friendly WiFi Scheme – and MORE – like marketing insights, analytics, and integrations with popular internet applications like Zapier and Mailchimp to keep your business growing.

And the best part? It’s easy to get going with Stampede – you can either use our preconfigured devices, or, if you’re using one of our tech partners like UniFi, get started right away by connect to your devices through our easy to use Connect Dashboard.

Either way you choose, you’ll be able to offer your customers, safe, secure WiFi – 100% porn and prisoner free.

Click here to get started.