One of my friend recently came back from his trip to New Delhi and he told me that, if you want to use an internet cafe, you need to give a copy of your ID or passport. I wonder why they asked him for that? Do you have any idea? It sounds a little dodgy to me.
Internet cafe's are required to keep record of every customer and the time they were using their services. It is common practice.
Because of day to day crimes taking place through internet it has become one of the mandatory process in all the internet cafes around india.
I can see this as a way for the cafe to cover themselves if anything happens because they are the ones who provide the network and would be the ones in trouble if someone did something illegal. It makes total sense if you look at it that way.
It just makes sense to know who is using your wi-fi. If anything illegal is going on then the café would have a record of who was using the network and when. It's a liability issue.
I hope that is not the case in hotels where I would be using the wifi anyway. My room tariff includes wifi facility and I am glad for that. It seems to be unsafe in internet cafes outside so I will not be using them.
