Starbucks and McDonald's Announce Porn Blocks On Their Wi-Fi Networks (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN Money: Anti-pornography groups have succeeded in their efforts to get Starbucks and McDonald's to block porn on the chains' Wi-Fi networks..."We had not heard from our customers that this was an issue, but we saw an opportunity that is consistent with our goal of providing an enjoyable experience for families," McDonald's said in a statement... Starbucks said Friday it's will do so the same thing at its company-owned stores around the globe as well. "Once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores," said a Starbucks spokesperson. "In the meantime, we reserve the right to stop any behavior that interferes with our customer experience, including what is accessed on our free Wi-Fi..."
Meanwhile, this week, the Republican Party officially added the "public health crisis" of porn to its platform.

Comments

Nothin' to do with blocking porn

[rsilvergun]

and everything to do with limiting bandwidth and exposure (there's a pun in there somewhere). I'm guessing they got a few cease and desists from porn companies for folks bit torrenting stuff. As an added bonus you don't have creepy dudes huffing and puffing at a McDonalds or Starbucks (well, not as many anyway)

Re:Time and place

[allquixotic]

That's why you just need to make your VPN traffic look like normal web traffic. There are various protocols out there that are so obfuscated that even a deep packet inspection firewall couldn't tell that it's not ordinary web traffic.

It adds overhead and latency, but it's really not that difficult to do. Somewhat ironically, it is based on the exact same principle as terrorists use to infiltrate countries they want to blow up: you become really, really good at looking exactly like the sheeple. You don't stand out. You look perfectly ordinary just like the rest of the law-abiding citizens. Except that the *semantics* of the data you're transferring -- which no firewall or DPI could possibly understand -- are such that porn content (or whatever) is being delivered to your computer.

Blocking is for deterring casual use, not for actually preventing something from being done. See: Great Firewall of China.