Public WiFi is a great benefit to offer your customers, especially if your business is within the hospitality sector, or somewhere people may have to spend some time, e.g. a mechanic. Have you ever sat down at a cafe, wanted to look something up on your phone, and logged into their free wifi using your email address? Have you ever wondered why they do that, rather than simply offering their customers a password to use?

Offering public WiFi: the security risks

We’ve written about this before from the perspective of being an end user of public WiFi, and using VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to keep your private information safe, but what about businesses who offer their customers public WiFi? If you’re thinking of offering public wifi, there’s actually a certain amount of data that should be recorded as part of the Anti-terrorism, Crime, and Security Act of 2001. There is also the Digital Economy Act 2010 (DEA2010) which suggests the owner of the internet connection could be held liable as the most likely culprit of lawful activity on their network.

Say someone has looked up some illegal adult content on their phone keeping the tab open, they walk into a cafe, and log in to the cafes WiFi which only has a single password for everyone and no other security measures. When they leave, the content they’ve accessed will be identifiable by the cafe’s Internet Service Provider (ISP), but the cafe owner won’t be able to attribute the content directly to the person actually committing the offence, potentially landing themselves in hot water.

By offering public WiFi, collecting people’s email addresses on sign-in would make them easier to track, were they to be looking at or downloading illegal content. More than anything else, this acts as a protection to the business owner who can now present other options as to who was accessing the content, moving the suspicion from them.

Public wifi solutions for marketing

It’s not all about security through. If you offer WiFi and collect people’s email addresses for logging in to it, there is a GREAT opportunity for some marketing shenanigans that’ll keep Ian from marketing and Kelly from sales very happy indeed. Depending on which service provider you use for providing log-in options to your customers, there’s a bog element of customisation you have, as to what your customer sees when they’re logging in, and after they’ve successfully logged in!

Here are a few ways you can leverage offering public wifi to improve your marketing efforts:

● If people are giving you their email anyway, ask them if they’d like to sign up for your mailing list. In one line, give them a compelling reason why they might want to do this – a great way to build your audience.
● Once they’ve logged in, show them a page signposting them to somewhere interesting to go next. This could be your social media links, introduce them to an ongoing competition and show them where they can enter, leave a review, rate your server – the sky’s your limit on this one, and it gives some great room for creative thinking.

What equipment do you need to offer public WiFi?

Hardware-wise, you will need an Access Point, Router, and a Managed Switch. The switch is what allows you to have multiple log-ins, for example ‘staff’ and ‘guest’. Software-wise, a subscription to a data collection portal will allow you to take down people’s emails, and brand it up to match the look and feel of your business. Your IT Services Support worker shuld

Although it might sound like a bit of a faff, once it’s up and running you can be safe in the knowledge that in the rare event someone does attempt legal activity on your network, you can prove it wasn’t you or someone within your business, and it can be a vastly overlooked way of engaging with your customers and bringing them in to your audience. If it’s something you’d like to do, but you feel like your head’s spinning, please do get in touch with us for a chat – we’d love to help you get set up.