We wrote this to give you some tips on how your business can provide legally compliant guest WiFi. Whether you are running a small cafe or a huge hotel there are various laws and regulations you need to consider when providing WiFi to the public (aka guests).
The good news is that you only need to consider three questions. Considering the three questions we have laid out below will help you work out whether your WiFi is legally compliant or not.
If your guest WiFi can’t do all of the following three things then it isn’t legally compliant.
1. Can you discourage illegal downloading on your WiFi network?
The Digital Economy Act 2010 is designed reduce online copyright infringement such as illegal downloading and illegal file sharing. You could be fined up to £50,000 for anyone downloading copyrighted material on your internet connection. A case was reported where a pub owner received an £8000 fine because someone had downloaded copyrighted material over his open Wi-Fi hotspot. This is a perfect reason not to allow the public unmanaged access to your internet!
If you don’t keep a record of who accesses your network then your WiFi is not legally compliant.
2. Are you able to discourage criminal activity on your WiFi network?
Under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, you need to be able to identify who is using your WiFi network. However this will be very difficult to do without the proper WiFi infrastructure in place. Authorities will track illegal activities by tracing suspicious internet traffic back through your ISP. If you are contacted then you should be able to provide details of who has accessed your WiFi.
If you don’t keep a record of who accesses your network and which device they used then your WiFi is not legally compliant.
3. Does your WiFi follow GDPR Guidelines?
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on the 25th May 2018. Regardless of Brexit, the UK must comply and fines can be up to 4% of your turnover if you don’t. If you currently provide public Wi-Fi, the terms and conditions of your WiFi service need to be very clear. What data are you are collecting? Why are you collecting the data? What is your intended usage of the data? In addition, your guests will have to opt-in to any marketing material. GDPR compliance also requires clear instructions on how to opt-out.
If your WiFi network doesn’t ask all users to accept terms and conditions before accessing it as well as ask for permission for storing their data then it is not compliant with GDPR guidelines.
Is your WiFi legally compliant?
If you said no to any of the three questions then your WiFi is not currently legally compliant.
We have been providing legally compliant WiFi to businesses for 15+ years and our customers think we are excellent at it.
G5Zone™ includes a login page where guests need to register and accept terms and conditions. Having a security feature like this can discourage criminal activity, illegal downloads and keep you GDPR friendly.
With G5Zone™ this is a hands off process for you. The data management is all done via the login page and all you need to do is contact us if you ever need that information.
A further benefit to having a secure login page is being able to use it for marketing purposes. We can include marketing permissions request as part of the login process. This means possible extra renevue for your business.
If you’d like to discuss your current WiFi setup with us and find out how we can help your business then get in touch with our friendly team:
Our managed WiFi service G5Zone™ provides legally compliant WiFi login pages with custom branding or social medial WiFi logins. The Terms and Conditions of our WiFi login pages are compliant with current GDPR regulations. We will continue to update these with any regulation changes.
