According to VentureBeat, popular fast food chain McDonald’s is now filtering its complimentary wi-fi service to block pornography.
Internet safety group Enough Is Enough (EIE) has been speaking out for years on the dangers of porn being accessed in public places. The group’s mission is “making the internet safer for children and families.” Not long ago, EIE launched its “National Porn-Free Wi-Fi” campaign, gathering thousands signatures from supporters and working with our good friends over in Washington D.C., the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The target of the campaign was two of the biggest chains that offer free public internet access—McDonald’s and Starbucks.
While both stores already successfully filter porn from their stores in the United Kingdom, the same is not true in America. According to EIE, Seattle-based coffee company Starbucks has yet to respond to its campaign. However, McDonald’s has been looking to filter out porn from its U.S. stores and is now making the move.
In a statement release by Enough Is Enough:
In the first quarter of 2016, McDonald’s began to implement their new filtered WiFi policy in their corporate-owned restaurants in the U.S., and made the same service available to their franchisees. While McDonald’s wasn’t aware of any pornography related incidents in their stores, their move to offer filtered WiFi is clearly one more major step in the right direction. The bottom line – the majority of McDonald’s restaurants now offer safer WiFi access for their patrons.
“Parents can have peace of mind that, when they or their children go to McDonald’s, they will have a safer and more friendly WiFi experience, filtered from pornography, from child porn and from potential sexual exploitation and predation,” said EIE President Donna Rice Hughes. “McDonald’s deserves widespread praise for this act of corporate responsibility and commitment to children and family safety.”
By actively filtering out pornography on their WiFi, McDonald’s now joins other restaurant such as Chick-fil-A and Panera Bread, who have also taking steps to ensure the safety of its customers.
“Internet pornography is a public health crisis,” said Mrs. Hughes. “There are many studies on the deleterious effects of Internet pornography on the developing brains of children and teens and the fueling role of porn on child sexual exploitation. Parents need to know which family restaurants are safe from online threats. Other companies would be wise to follow McDonald’s lead.”
The Golden Arches restaurant has 99 billion served when it comes to hamburgers, and now hopefully it will be reaching another number when it comes to porn accessed in its restaurants: zero.
