When surfing at work goes wrong
December 9, 2008 by Shane BorerPosted in: "Would you want this person in Finance?", In this week's e-newsletter, Latest news & views, Tech failure
Think most employees know the difference between inappropriate and acceptable Web sites? These numbers tell a different story.
No matter your company’s policy on computer work use, employees will always check their personal e-mail or log on to see how their fantasy teams are stacking up.
But according to a study by IT security firm MessageLabs, inappropriate computer use is rampant — and not just with “innocent” time-wasters, either.
The study looked at all the times a Web site was blocked by a company’s URL filtering service. According to the results, 85% of sexually explicit Web site blocks occur during the work day.
And nearly 30% of those blocks occur exclusively during lunch hour, when many employees are out of the office.
Your company might already have a computer use policy in place, but it looks like there’s one other way to cut down on inappropriate surfing: Invite them out to lunch.
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Tags: Company policy, Lunch hour, MessageLabs, URL filtering
December 12th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I used to get flagged when I visited CNN.com during lunch. There were often ads from Victoria’s Secret, and the “inappropriate site” blocker would warn me that my attempt to access a sex-related site was being reported to my supervisor. Maybe the statistics are being inflated by nonsense like that.