Throughout the month of September, the Wall Street Journal is offering free Wi-Fi across more than 1,300 hotspots in New York and another 1,000 in San Francisco. The New York hotspots blanket the entirety of high-traffic neighborhoods like Times Square, West Village, and Washington Square Park. Popular locations such as Nob Hill and Fisherman’s Wharf will be covered in San Francisco.
“We’re always looking for ways to give people the opportunity to sample The Wall Street Journal. This is the latest in a long history of those efforts.” a representative from the Wall Street Journal said. Existing subscribers will be able to log into the Wi-Fi network using existing credentials. New users will be required to register a (free) account to use the service.
The Journal stands to collect a large amount of subscriber, and non-subscriber data about websites visited and locations that the Journal readers frequent. No information has been provided about content filtering with the service, nor has there been any specifics on DNS manipulation for advertising insertion by the Journal.
