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Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: September 2026

This policy applies to any guest Wi-Fi network powered by Hotwireless, and to the venue that offers it. By connecting, a guest agrees to these rules. For a venue, this policy forms part of our Terms & Conditions.

For guests: what you may not do

You must not use the network to:

  • Do anything unlawful under the law of England and Wales, or under the law that applies where you are.
  • Access, store or share indecent images of children, or any other material whose possession or distribution is a criminal offence. This is reported, not warned about.
  • Access or share pornography, or material that is obscene, grossly offensive or harmful to children, in what is a public place where children may be present.
  • Harass, threaten, stalk or abuse anyone, or send communications intended to cause distress.
  • Share or promote terrorist material, or content that stirs up hatred against a group.
  • Infringe copyright or other intellectual property — including unlicensed film, television, music and software, and the peer-to-peer tools commonly used to move them.
  • Attempt to access any network, device or account you are not authorised to use, or to test, scan or interfere with the venue's systems. Unauthorised access to a computer is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
  • Distribute malware, run phishing pages, or spoof another person or business.
  • Send unsolicited bulk email or messages, or use the connection for any other form of spam.
  • Use automated tools, mining software or downloads that take a disproportionate share of a shared line.

We may end a session immediately where use breaches this policy or threatens the network, and we will report criminal activity to the police.

Fair use

The line is shared with everyone else in the building. Time and bandwidth limits are set per access tier so that one device cannot spoil the connection for the room. Trying to get around those limits ends the session.

Your own safety on a public network

Public Wi-Fi carries risks that a home connection does not. Stick to sites that show https, keep your device updated, think twice before entering banking or payment details, and use a VPN for confidential work. Our access rules keep guests off the network the business runs on. That protects the business; it does not make a public network a private one, and it cannot protect a device from what its user chooses to do.

For venues: your responsibilities

You are the one offering Wi-Fi to the public, so a few things sit with you:

  • Publish your terms. Your terms of use are shown or linked at the login. Tell guests plainly what you collect and why — we build the wording with you.
  • Decide your filtering position. It is your line, so it is your call and your provider's to set. See the next section.
  • Brief your staff. Somebody on site should know what to do if a guest reports abuse or a child is at risk, and who to escalate to.
  • Keep marketing lawful. Under PECR a Wi-Fi login is not marketing consent. Consent is a separate, unticked opt-in and you must be able to evidence it. What you send afterwards is your responsibility — see our Privacy & Cookies Notice.
  • Tell us about a problem. Report abuse, a security concern or a police request to sales@hotwireless.co.uk.

Filtering

Let us be accurate about the law, because plenty of suppliers are not.

There is no statutory duty on a UK pub, hotel, café or shop to filter its guest Wi-Fi. The Online Safety Act 2023 regulates online services such as search and user-to-user platforms; it does not turn a venue offering Wi-Fi into a regulated service, and anyone telling you the Act obliges you to filter is overstating it. What does exist is a clear duty-of-care expectation: a venue that offers open internet access in a place where children may be present is expected to take reasonable steps, and licensing authorities, insurers and family-facing brands increasingly ask about it.

So filtering is a decision, and it is the venue's to make. We do not inspect or filter what guests look at, and we do not sell content filtering by category. The rules for your network are the ones your acceptable use policy sets at the login, and you remain responsible for what your line is used for. If you want traffic filtered by category, the people to ask are your broadband provider: they supply and control the line, and filtering belongs on it.

Friendly WiFi is the UK trust mark for filtered public Wi-Fi, run by RDI (UK) Holdings. It is awarded to a venue rather than to a supplier: a certified venue is re-tested each year and its filtering must block pornography and known child sexual abuse material. Hotwireless does not hold the mark, so neither we nor a venue using our service may display it or claim it. If you want it for your venue you apply directly, and the filtering it tests for is arranged with whoever supplies your line.

Logging and monitoring

We record connection metadata: device identifier, the time a session started and ended, and how much data it used. Where the venue has taken a package that collects guest details, we hold those too.

We do not inspect the content of your traffic. We do not read messages, we do not decrypt secure connections and we do not build a browsing history against a guest.

How long these records are kept, and where they are processed, is set out in our Privacy & Cookies Notice.

Lawful requests

We sometimes receive a request from the police, a court or a regulator for information about a session. We check that a request is lawful and properly made before we answer it, we give only what the request actually covers, and we tell the venue unless we are prohibited from doing so. We do not hand over guest records on an informal request.

A venue receiving a request directly should forward it to sales@hotwireless.co.uk and we will help.

Reporting abuse

If you see something on a network we power that breaches this policy, email sales@hotwireless.co.uk with the venue and the time. If a child is at risk, contact the police on 999. Indecent images of children can be reported to the Internet Watch Foundation at report.iwf.org.uk.

Liability

Guests use the network at their own risk. Neither the venue nor Hotwireless is liable for loss, damage or inconvenience arising from a guest's use of it, including interruption of service, compromise of a device or loss of data. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Changes

We update this policy from time to time and the current version always sits at this address.