ALWAYS, ALWAYS READ the small print. Here’s why.
A small number of Londoners unwittingly agreed to give up their first born child in exchange for free WiFi, The Guardian reports.
WiFi hotspots were set up in busy areas of the city back in June, subject to a host of terms and conditions including a ‘Herod Clause’.
This stated that the recipient must agree “to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity”.
Six people signed away their eldest child before the hotspot was shut down.
Luckily for them, the whole thing was an experiment by the Cyber Security Research Institute to explore the security issues of public WiFi use.
F-Secure, the Finnish security firm that sponsored the research, has said it won’t be enforcing the clause.
As this is an experiment, we will be returning the children to their parents. While the 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.
Kind of them. F-Secure’s security advisor Sean Sullivan says the stunt was all to make people more careful about using unprotected WiFi:
People are thinking of WiFi as a place as opposed to an activity… You don’t do unprotected WiFi at home, why are you doing it in public?
