34% Indians use free Wi-Fi to watch adult content
When the concept of Digital India originated, Indian Government and various state governments took the initiative of free Wi-Fi at public places like railway stations. Various restaurants had been offering free Wi-Fi to their customers for a long time.
The purpose of this free Wi-Fi was to ensure awareness if a man needs to confirm the existence of some law while travelling. Or to enhance knowledge by studying while travelling.
However, according to a latest study done by Norton (by Symantec) one in three Indians admitted to having used free public Wi-Fi to watch adult content at places like airports, hotels, libraries and even workplace.
Why Wi-Fi is not being used for educational purposes?
India is said to be a nation obsessed with cinema and suppressed desires where people want entertainment more than education. Hence, out of every 100 Indians, 34 find nothing wrong with using free Wi-Fi to satisfy their hidden desires.
Disregard for surroundings
People addicted to porn have no regard for surroundings. If free Wi-Fi is there, they would just start using it as per their whims and fancies, irrespective of the location or people around.
According to surveys, favorable places (listed by Indian respondents), along with percentage of respondents to watch adult content via free Wi-Fi are being displayed below in the form of the following bar graph.
Indians obsessed with Wi-Fi?
Many respondents also admitted that access to Wi-Fi was indeed a deciding factor for them to decide which hotel, airline service or restaurant to book. Due to obsession with Wi-Fi, 73% respondents said that “they would not think twice about exchanging, sharing or even doing something to get a strong, free signal”.
Ritesh Chopra, Country Manager (Consumer Business Unit) at Symantec also spoke about the difference between the opinion of people considering public Wi-Fi safe for use and the reality. He said:
“What someone thinks are private on their personal device can easily be accessed by cyber criminals through unsecure Wi-Fi networks or even apps with privacy vulnerabilities.”
Symantec also noted that 96% of Indian respondents had acted in a risky manner online using a public Wi-Fi.
Concerns regarding cyber security
Public Wi-Fi have a risk of the information entered by users can be seen and accessed by hackers who take advantage of insecure networks and steal user information and data. Following bar graph displays the percentage of users and the crucial data that faces a big risk of getting stolen and misused by hackers.
To the question regarding hackers accessing their private chats, 33% acknowledged it as being a matter of anger while 30% said that they would be embarrassed. 41% said that most horrifying moment would be financial details getting stolen and getting published online.
Craze for adult content worldwide
However, Indians are not alone indulging in this practice. According to the results of the same survey being done on a global level, one in six individual used free Wi-Fi in his country for watching porn. Apart from India, other countries included in survey are Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Netherlands, USA and UK.
Benefits of Public Wi-Fi
- Education:
- Finding restaurants:
- Boost to tourism:
- Legal Awareness:
Free Wi-Fi is bridging the digital between small towns and big cities. And even villages that have electricity as well as internet. Free Wi-Fi helps people to download books of knowledge and read them.
While on the move, users can find restaurants on the road using GPS via public Wi-Fi.
Tourist destinations with public Wi-Fi are always hot attractions. Tourists can use them to find monuments and plan to visit them.
As mentioned earlier, Public Wi-Fi can be used to find laws and legal provisions of a particular law so that the user can be aware of his rights.
With these benefits, it is indeed sad that public Wi-Fi is used only for watching adult content.
What you use public Wi-Fi for? What are your biggest concerns regarding the cyber security issues pertaining to public Wi-Fi? Post your comments.
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