Users of the City of Edinburgh Council’s wifi network made more than 100 ‘attempts’ a day to access pornographic content online over the last six months.
Shock data from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the local authority found firewalls prevented over 18,000 efforts to view adult or explicit material during the period.
The network - which is used across homeworking VPN’s, public buildings such as libraries and certain public spaces - automatically flags obscene images and videos and blocks their appearance on search engines.
Adverts embedded in other websites are also blocked by the council’s security systems if they are judged to contain adult content.
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A council spokesperson said it was ‘likely’ the majority of the material picked up by the servers as being explicit came in the form of advertising promotions - though there was no way of splitting up the information.
A total of 18,810 attempts were flagged after snagging the ‘pornographic content’ filter embedded in the council system between May 7 and November 3 this year - around 104 every day.
A council spokesperson added: “Pornography is blocked by default on the City of Edinburgh Council network.
“Attempted connections may originate from advertising and other page content rather than the user.”
