Mumbai’s free WiFi ‘hot’spots: 30,000 visit porn websites daily; can’t stop people, says IT

State IT department said that though it was impossible to control this behaviour completely, the number is less when compared to the users of other internet services providers

Around 10% of the three lakh people who access Mumbai’s free WiFi services in a day use it to browse pornography, statistics from state information technology (IT) department revealed.

On January 6, just before the Mumbai civic polls, the government rolled out its ambitious free WiFi project by activating 510 hotspots in the city. (HT)

On January 6, just before the Mumbai civic polls, the government rolled out its ambitious free WiFi project by activating 510 hotspots in the city.

With this, Mumbai became the first Indian city with WiFi connectivity.

This was followed by activation of another 75 hotspots, taking the tally to 585.

On average 30,000 of the three lakh daily WiFi users use it to watch porn, sources said.

VK Gautam, principal secretary, state IT department, said though it was impossible to eradicate this, the number was low when compared to user of other internet services providers.

He added that the department had blocked 38 suspicious websites and the list was sent to the Centre’s department of telecommunications (DoT).

These sites have been added to list of websites blocked by the DoT.

“The problem is, people won’t stop watching pornography. What we can do is keep refining the system. As soon as a user tries to access such websites, we have a system which blocks the access. The 38 websites are those that somehow escaped from our system,” Gautam said.