Porn websites visited daily on Mumbai’s free Wi-Fi spots! Around 30,000 Mumbaikars browse adult sites everyday

On 6th January, Maharashtra government gifted its capital city Mumbai the free Wi-Fi project right before the civic polls.

India’s financial capital Mumbai is also country’s first state to get government wi-fi for free. And guess what are they using the free ‘hotspot’ connectivity for? The answer is visiting porn and adult websites daily. Around three lakh people access the free wi-fi services everyday but surprisingly 10 percent or 30,000 Mumbaikars use high-speed connectivity to browse adult sites and watch pornography, reveal the statistics from Maharashtra state information technology (IT) department. Woman wants Ban on Porn websites! Files petition in Mumbai court as husband gets addicted to pornography.

On 6th January, Maharashtra government gifted its capital city Mumbai the free Wi-Fi project right before the civic polls. 510 free Wi-Fi hotspots were activated across the city. Another 75 followed making the present total tally stand at 585. The Phase two of the advanced project will have 1,200 wi-fi hotspots by May 2017.

But the news of around 30,000 of the three lakh Mumbaikars using free connectivity to watch porn is worrying, especially if the available wi-fi is used by children to visit the explicit websites. This has become a matter of huge concern for the parents in the state. Porn Alert: This girl’s private chat with her hubby ends up on porn site!

Nevertheless, VK Gautam, principal secretary of the state information technology (IT) department, takes solace in the fact that the number was still lower than those of other internet service providers. “This is a game of cat and mouse, where we block such websites, and they keep coming up using different domain names. No one can stop them. It is a continuous process, which will go on forever,” said Gautam.

The IT department has now blocked 38 websites; these have also been added to the list of sites blocked by the Centre’s Department of Telecommunications (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 further added.

The Free Wi-Fi connectivity is touted to be India’s largest public Wi-Fi service and one of the largest globally too. As per the reports, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ plans, after the ambitious free wifi hotspots connectivity in Mumbai, he looks forward to expanding it in Pune and Nagpur.