Lots Of Porn Found On Work Computers
from the what-do-you-do-with-your-free-time? dept
A few years back, when I was working at a tech startup, we went through the usual “laptop shuffle” – someone higher up on the favor scale got a new laptop, and his old laptop (which was still newer than my laptop) shuffled on to me, and my laptop shuffled on to someone else. We weren’t advanced enough to do anything such as cleaning out the laptop before passing it on, so I got to see all of this guy’s bookmarks and cached sites – and discovered that the vast majority of them were porn sites. So, now I knew what he did with his free time at work. Before that, I honestly believed that people were smart enough not to surf porn at work (yes, yes, so naive). I guess it shouldn’t be a huge surprise, then, that a survey of HR folks says that nearly two-thirds of HR people say they’ve discovered porn on employees’ computers. Of course, this is an online poll, so the answers might not reflect anything like reality. Also, the poll only asks HR if they have discovered the porn – which could mean that, among the other third, there are plenty of employees surfing porn without being noticed by HR. Finally, since the poll only asks the HR people, there’s no indication of just how many employees are surfing porn at work. Is everyone doing it, or is it just one careless person (like the guy who passed on his laptop to me) in each company?
Comments on “Lots Of Porn Found On Work Computers”
here
At work here, the network department did an audit of our fileshares. Keep in mind this is NOT an individual employee’s PC, but servers on the network meant to store files and things.
35% of the space used was porn pictures and movies downloaded and stored by various employees.
Now I’m not against porn, but seriously, why the hell does someone surf for porn AT WORK? Its not like you can masturbate in your cubicle (or worse, some of the machines that downloaded the stuff were open machines in full sight (but not reach) of the public…).
And all this is in spite of webfilters and such…which, while they are easy to circumvent, do require SOME conscious effort to circumvent, so its not like people “stumbled” on porn.
Do people not have self control anymore?
Re: Not Everywhere
I know of several large, public companies that have a zero tolerance policy – if you view porn at work and are caught, you are fired. Period. No warning. No second chances. Rules are laid out on the day you start work and you sign a paper saying you read them. Over the years there have been periodic dismissals and there hasn’t been any legal challenge to the policy.
I think these policies are good for large groups (like public companies) where there are going to be people either don’t have self restraint or are so bored they have nothing else to do (in which case they really don’t belong there).
Personally, I avoid any temptation by being transparent. My monitor faces my inside office window so anyone walking by can see what I am doing (even as I type this).
Ofcourse, this doesn’t stop me from reading blogs, which are another issue…. 🙂
Here, too
I go to lunch with some of the network admin guys a couple of times a year to swap IT horror stories.
So far they’ve uncovered several dozen employees with porn on their personal network file space and in greater than 50% of the occurences, the ‘offender’ has been female. In about 10% of occurences, the porn includes pictures of the ‘offender’, yes, even the women.
When files are discovered, they are deleted and an e-mail is sent to the employee reminding them that file space is reserved for company data only and if you really need to store personal documents (wink, wink) please store them on your local hard drive (where they can’t be viewed by IT) instead of on a network drive (where they can). So far only one employee has been dismissed for repeatedly violating the company policy. Considering we have over 2500 people at this location, that seems pretty good.
My favorite IT story from one those IT guys is about a person in R&D who called and told the CSR that he was ‘out of free space on my shared drive – please fix it’. The IT guy backed up everything from that person’s network space and then deleted all the files and sent him an e-mail letting him know that he now had a lot more free space available to him. The person who had placed the call didn’t find that the least bit humorous, but everybody else did!
Re: Here, too
“…In about 10% of occurences, the porn includes pictures of the ‘offender’, yes, even the women…”
Sounds like they’ve found an image resource for this years holiday cards 😉
Re: Re: speed racer
A lot of people probably download stuff at work because they’ve got a faster internet connection there than at home. Porn will get you fired automatically here. So will Kazaa or any other file-sharing app.
A gov’t employee got caught viewing porn by a female coworker. He had his clearance suspended for six months while he was investigated. The investigation wasn’t about whether he downloaded porn but about whether he downloaded kiddie porn. When it was concluded that he hadn’t downloaded kiddie porn he was reprimanded (and possibly demoted) and reassigned but not terminated. Go figure.
Re: Re: Here, too
Yes, technically anything on the network is owned by the company isn’t it ? ( grin )
Re: Here, too
You guys are a lawsuit waiting to happen. By saying keep them on your local drive wink wink. You have now placed your company in a condoning situation. It might be funny to you guys but a court of law would say otherwise. Good thing you didn’t metion your company at this time or it would have been happy job hunting.
Porn Fun at Work
In our programming department everyone knows to lock their computer when they leave their desk, because otherwise fun things happen – like their IE start page is mysteriously reset to a porn site so that the next time they start their browser they get all kinds of nice popups spawning all over their desktop.
Pr0n, not Techdirt?
And all along I thought my use of Techdirt on company downtime (lunchbreak, etc.) was a big thing that might get me in trouble. Guess I can keep “Techdirt’ng” away, with the satisfaction in the knowledge that while I am using Techdirt, I am not downloading Pr0n, and thus not on HR’s hit list.
Kudo's to my company ...
I for one am thankful for my companies liberal internet usage policy. We are allowed to view websites for news, banking, hobbies, etc. as long as the websites in question are not in bad taste & do not interfere with our work. We do have filters set up to block certain sites that have been deemed inappropriate, but by allowing us the freedom to surf intelligently, we rarely have someone abusing the policy. Yes, occasionally the message pops up warning you that the site you are trying to connect to is inappropriate and is blocked, but our network administrators do not get ” bent out of shape ” when they see that this happens only occasionally. I mean, how many of you have accidentally clicked on something that took you to a web page that can be considered porn ? By trusting us, we return the respect and make their jobs much less difficult and the morale around here is better than most companies that ban internet usage.
No Subject Given
One thing this does not address: laptops… there are people who have to travel, and whether it is against company policy or not, those people will have person recreations on their machines, be it games, MP3s, porn (or a combination thereof), so that during downtime they have something to do.
Honestly, so long as the stuff is not coming up at the workplace, it should not be a problem, especially when the employee is REPEATEDLY asked to travel on behalf of the company without any additional compensation, or expenses to cover “recreation” while away from home. (Which is worse, having porn on your corporate laptop, or getting arrested for solicitation while visiting a client?)
However, there needs to be a line, and trying to define a line that defends that scenario above would be tough. So we are left with the current situations.
Re: No Subject Given
How HArd is it to BURN youR Porn On to a CD so it wont be saved on the laptop???
Come on People its A WORK Machine. Its NOT YouRs and Porn Does not belong on it (unless you work for a porn website)
of course
“2/3 of HR people have found porn on employee computers”: Of course, because problems are routed to HR people.
This is not the same as “2/3 or employees surf porn at work”!
what!
there must be extensive security when it comes in visiting websites.