Why do public wifi hotspots ask you to accept terms and conditions?

Because people sue for any reason at the drop of the hat.

Someone might pull up porn on their computer, get busted by their wife or husband, end up in a divorce, and try to blame it on the establishment providing the hotspot because THEY did not have a Netnanny or other programs to keep them from watching the porn in the 1st place. Second, while they are out watching the porn they get infected with a trojan or some other virus that takes down their machine and they try to blame who setup the hotspot for that.

Butt covering both ways.

The hotspot people don’t want to be liable if you download kiddie porn or if you upload some virus that hurts others.

The flip side is that they also don’t want any liability if you download something to your PC or phone that turns out to be a virus or something else damaging.

Covering both cheeks, I would say.

Many people who may have their home wifi service protected behind encryption don’t realize (or forget) that using a public wifi is accessible to anyone and everyone.

This means that you’re leaving yourself wide open to being hacked or picking up malware.

Whoever is providing the free wifi doesn’t want to get blamed for the misdeeds of whoever uses their service, and rightfully so.

End of the day you are responsible for protecting your device from malware or viruses. The reason they have the conditions is that when it is open and public, and if I’m so inclined sitting on the same network, I can see and access what you are doing. This is why no one should ever do their banking on public networks.