Hand over your child and get free Wi-Fi

A handful of London residents unwittingly agreed to give up their first-born child when signing in to a public Wi-Fi hot spot as part of an experiment carried out by the Cyber Security Research Institute.

A "Herod clause" was included in the T's and C's, which promised free Wi-Fi if "the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity".

Luckily for the six people who failed to read the small print, security firm F-Secure, who sponsored the experiment, assured everyone that the clause wouldn't be enforced.

In a rather tongue in cheek statement, the Finnish company said, "We have yet to enforce our rights under the terms and conditions but, as this is an experiment, we will be returning the children to their parents. Our legal adviser Mark Deem points out that, while terms and conditions are legally binding, it is contrary to public policy to sell children in return for free services, so the clause would not be enforceable in a court of law".

This experiment does of course carry a serious message regarding the dangers of using public Wi-Fi, as outlined by Troels Oerting, assistant director at Europol, "We have found that the security on many Wi-Fi hotspots is rather low. So because they are not set up in the proper way, the criminals don't even need to set up their own service. They can simply look into the service that is providing the Wi-Fi to get what they want".

The research demonstrates that, along with obviously not reading the terms and conditions, many members of the public simply aren't aware of the security issues that accompany public Wi-Fi. So, although the chances of having to hand over your children are relatively low, you might be giving away your personal information without even realizing.

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