One in three Indians uses free Wi-Fi to watch porn: study

Half of them watch adult content at work, in hotels, hostels or Airbnb and one third at cafés or restaurants

One in three Indians has admitted to using free public Wi-Fi at places such as hotels, airports, libraries and even workplace to watch adult content, revealed a study conducted by Norton by Symantec.

The security firm surveyed around 15,000 adults across 15 countries including India, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Brazil, the US and the UK. Out of over 1,000 respondents from India, almost half of them admitted that they watched adult content over public Wi-Fi at work, in hotels, hostels or Airbnb while over one third of them said they did so at cafés or restaurants.

The study revealed that the phenomenon is not limited to Indians only as one in six respondents globally admitted using free public Wi-Fi to watch explicit or suggestive content.



Of the total people who admitted watching adult content using public Wi-Fi, about 17 per cent did so at libraries, 25 per cent used free Wi-Fi at an airport and 18 per cent had done so at a bus or train station.

Interestingly, 24 per cent respondents said they watched adult content even on streets using public Wi-Fi while 15 per cent even used Wi-Fi at schools to watch adult content.



The cyber security firm said people did not realise that by using public Wi-Fi, they were putting their personal and private information at risk.

Two out of three people surveyed said they thought their personal information was safe when using public Wi-Fi, while 55 per cent said they could not tell whether a public Wi-Fi network was secure or not.



Despite such glaring uncertainties, less than 20 per cent use a virtual private network (VPN) to protect themselves.

“There is a deep divide between what people think is safe or private when using public Wi-Fi versus the reality,” said Nick Shaw, the vice president and general manager of Norton by Symantec.

“What someone thinks is private on their personal device can easily be accessed by hackers through unsecured Wi-Fi networks or even apps with privacy vulnerabilities.”

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