AFA Praises McDonald’s for Protecting Children and Families From Internet and Child Pornography
TUPELO, Miss.— The American Family Association (AFA, www.afa.net) announced today that it is praising the McDonald’s Corporation® for their decision to filter pornography and child pornography from public Wi-Fi in their U.S. restaurants.
McDonald’s decision was encouraged by Enough Is Enough (EIE), the nation’s pioneering Internet safety organization. EIE launched its “National Porn Free Wi-Fi” campaign in the fall of 2014, with nearly 50,000 petitions and 75 partner organizations, including AFA and One Million Moms, a division of AFA, to encourage McDonald’s and Starbucks to lead corporate America in filtering Wi-Fi. Both companies were early adopters in the U.K., where they voluntarily filtered pornography on their public Wi-Fi networks. McDonald’s responded rapidly and positively to the initial outreach to their CEO by EIE in spring 2014, and began exploring options for Wi-Fi filtering. To date, Starbucks has yet to respond.
In the first quarter of 2016, McDonald’s began to implement their new filtered Wi-Fi policy in their corporate-owned restaurants in the U.S., and made the same service available to their franchisees. While McDonald's wasn’t aware of any pornography-related incidents in their stores, their move to offer filtered Wi-Fi is clearly one more major step in the right direction. The bottom line – the majority of McDonald’s restaurants now offer safer Wi-Fi access for their patrons.
“AFA and One Million Moms were happy to partner with EIE and encourage McDonald’s to have a safer and more family-friendly Wi-Fi experience, filtered from pornography, child porn and online threats,” said One Million Moms Director Monica Cole. “Over 24,000 names were collected from AFA and One Million Moms in this important campaign that EIE spearheaded. We thank McDonald’s for listening and for its commitment to children and family safety. We hope more companies follow its lead and create a safe Wi-Fi zone.”
Those who want to join AFA and One Million Moms in thanking McDonald’s for filtering Wi-Fi can visit www.onemillionmoms.com and sign the online petition.
By proactively filtering pornography and child porn on their Wi-Fi, McDonald’s now joins others such as Chick-fil-A and Panera Bread demonstrating their commitment to provide safe and secure Wi-Fi resulting in a family-friendly environment for all of their patrons.
