Over 25 million have been served daily by McDonalds. Now figure how many have taken advantage of the Free Wi-Fi they offer. People use to to be in touch with work or school or their personal social media accounts while there. McDonald’s offers this MickD, Mikey Dee’s, no matter what you call it, you are frequenting the Golden Arches.

McDonald’s biggest customer base is parents with young children. Teenagers and businessmen rank second and third on this list. So, since most of us are frequent, we are also utilizing that Free Wi-Fi and you should know there are ways you can protect yourself on free public Wi-Fi services.

While enjoying the free service, you want to make sure your personal information is safe, that hackers aren’t going to get your passwords for banking, email, credit card info. A VPN will help, however, like other free Wi-Fi locations, McDonald’s doesn’t welcome them so you end up not getting the login page because they block it. However, do NOT disconnect it. We have the solution to keep you safe and get that login page so you can connect. 

In order to understand why the McDonald’s WiFi login page won’t load, we need to talk a bit about the login page / captive portal.

Captive portals usually redirect you to a webpage where you can log in or accept the terms and conditions of usage. The network setup has specific IP address ranges that are accepted. These are assigned by the hotspot / router when you’re connecting to McDonald’s WiFi.

If you are using a third party DNS to block ads, the Wi-Fi login page may not show for you. In this case, switching the custom DNS off will fix the issue. However, it is more complicated than that. In many cases there are issues with the actual Wi-Fi login page and that is something that can only be fixed on the providers end.

Here are a few more tips and tricks you can try to get the McDonald’s Wi-Fi login page to load:

• Restart your device–This one solves a lot of problems, when an issue appears just restart your device and in many cases that will resolve it. Worth a shot!
• Disable pop-up blocking–If you have Pop-ups blocked on your system, the Wi-Fi login page won’t show up. Here is a Hot to Geek article showing you how to do this in Chrome.
• Flush DNS cache–DNS server’s data of websites is stored in the cache. You may face this problem if the IP of the login page of the Wi-Fi has changed recently. You can find instructions on how to flush DNS cache on any OS in this very helpful Hostinger’s article.

As mentioned before, if you are concerned about your online privacy and keep your personal data safe, you should be using a VPN. The thing is with most VPNs none of these tips and tricks will help and you will be stuck either exposed without a VPN or without Internet. It’s time to upgrade to Speedify bonding VPN and experience online security without any connectivity hassles.

When you join the McDonald’s Wi-Fi hotspot, Speedify will:

1. Show you a notification asking you if you want to login.
2. Keep you connected over cellular data so your other ongoing online activities (like Skype / Slack calls, streaming, gaming) will continue to work via the cellular connection, protected by Speedify so you don’t have to worry about dropped calls or streams.
3. If you click the notification prompting you to connect to McDonald’s Wi-Fi, Speedify will pop up the login screen in a window.
4. Once you login successfully, Speedify will immediately start using the Wi-Fi connection, allowing you to seamlessly switch over from cellular to Wi-Fi without stopping any of the things you are doing online.

Speedify uses channel bonding technology in order to bond multiple Internet connections at once. In the example above, it uses both Wi-Fi and cellular connections on your smartphone or laptop.

Finally, you can connect to any public Wi-Fi hotspot (including McDonald’s Wi-Fi!) and not worry about your data and privacy.