Legal & Security Implications of Offering Public WiFi

Legal compliance is an essential aspect of WiFi provision to protect our customers and their WiFi users

General Information

Any business that offers their WiFi password for customers to access their network is putting their business at risk and should provide a separate and secure system for guest WiFi. To protect your network, Vital Wifi provides a secure login process and also separates business WiFi from the guest WiFi.

Data Retention

The European Directive (2006/24/EC) has been implemented in the UK under the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 and the January 2004 Code of Practise (for voluntary retention of communications data) implemented under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Under the above directive, certain types of data are required to be retained necessary to identify the users accessing the Internet. The type of data to be retained is traffic data and location data, enabling us to trace the source of communication. Vital Wifi stores this data for our customers in line with the requirements of the regulation.

Copyright Infringement & Illegal Online Activity

The government has now passed the Digital Economy Bill. The Act was designed to implement steps to reduce online copyright infringement by end-users. The Act covers the illegal downloading of copyrighted material and illegal file-sharing. The Act came into law on June 2010 and prescribes obligations to keep end-user records to assist copyright owners in identifying and taking action. Vital Wifi provides a fully compliant legal intercept service that ensures viruses are blocked and content that would be deemed inappropriate in a public place is stopped before reaching the user’s device. Vital Wifi can also provide our customers with additional content filtering through Open DNS to prevent malware.

Law Enforcement Requests for Information

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), intelligence and law enforcement agencies such as the police can direct that communications data be provided for the purposes of investigating a crime. It is therefore very important that any communications data that the police or other law enforcement agency may require is stored and capable of being accessed upon a valid court order for the data.

Data Protection Act 1998

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 any user of Internet access services in a public establishment is entitled to request at any time details of his/her personal information. Failure to securely maintain and make available data to a data subject and may lead to the imposition of fines by the Information Commissioner. Vital Wifi stores this data for our customers in line with the requirements of the regulation on secure servers. It’s also worth noting that; unless a customer seeks explicit positive affirmation from the user (tick box or via T&Cs), this data is not used for marketing purposes and can only be disclosed to a very select list of approved authorities, primarily law enforcement agencies and Government bodies.