THOUSANDS of people have agreed to scrub festival portaloos in exchange for free Wi-Fi, all because they didn’t read the terms and conditions when signing up to the public network.

Manchester-based company Purple, which works with businesses to provide Wi-Fi hot spots for the public, added a “Community Service Clause” to their usual connection terms as part of an experiment to highlight the dangers of what can be hidden in user agreements.

More than 22,000 people willingly agreed to carry out 1,000 hours of community service in the two weeks during the experiment, Purple revealed in a blog post on their website.

Anyone who spotted the peculiar clause and flagged it was rewarded with a prize from the company.

Only one person who connected to the network for those two weeks, noticed the addition.

Luckily for those thousands of others that weren’t so observant the company has said they won’t be forcing anyone to arm themselves with a toilet brush and face the dreaded festival toilet or complete any of the other “services” on the agreement, which included:

Cleansing local parks of animal waste

Providing hugs to stray cats and dogs

Manually relieving sewer blockages

Cleaning portable lavatories at local festivals and events

Painting snail shells to brighten up their existence

Scraping chewing gum off the streets

CEO of Purple, Gavin Wheeldon, said that the experiment shows how important it is to take extra time to read the terms and conditions and make sure you aren’t agreeing to something unreasonable.

“Wi-Fi users need to read terms when they sign up to access a network. What are they agreeing to, how much data are they sharing, and what license are they giving to providers? Our experiment shows it’s all too easy to tick a box and consent to something unfair.”

Along with emphasising the importance of reading user agreements, the company used this cautionary tale as a way to announce becoming the first Wi-Fi provider to be compliant with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being introduced next year.

The legislation aims to simplify data privacy laws across Europe in an effort to help the public understand previously extensive and confusing terms and conditions agreements.