Starbucks is finally following through on a years-old promise to block porn sites from its free WiFi, according to Business Insider.
In 2016, the coffee chain responded to pressure from Enough is Enough, a group that advocates for internet safety, by telling CNN that it would make a change and block porn sites at its cafes.
Two years of inaction, however, led Enough is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes to put out a statement calling out Starbucks for not following through on its commitment. The statement included a link to a petition, which as of Wednesday had reached more than 26,000 signatures.
“By breaking its commitment, Starbucks is keeping the doors wide open for convicted sex offenders and others to fly under the radar from law enforcement and use free, public WiFi services to access illegal child porn and hard-core pornography,” Hughes said in the statement.
In its policy, the news source reports, Starbucks reportedly bans watching pornography at its coffee shops but had not yet added any content blockers to its WiFi to ban explicit content.
That will change next year, the coffee company told Business Insider.
While Hughes told the news agency she was pleased by the move, she pointed to other large companies that sprung into action much quicker. McDonalds, for example, was subjected to the same pressure by the advocacy group and in 2016 responded by announcing that it had implemented an internet filter to a majority of its nearly 14,000 restaurants.
Starbucks told Business Insider that it tested multiple tools, searching for a way to make sure that appropriate sites wouldn’t be blocked, though didn’t reveal details about the tool it plans to implement. Starbucks has not yet responded to Coins2Day‘s request for comment.
