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?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
here
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?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not Everywhere
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.... :-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Here, too
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!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Here, too
Sounds like they've found an image resource for this years holiday cards ;)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
speed racer
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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Here, too
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Here, too
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Porn Fun at Work
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pr0n, not Techdirt?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Kudo's to my company ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
Come on People its A WORK Machine. Its NOT YouRs and Porn Does not belong on it (unless you work for a porn website)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
of course
This is not the same as "2/3 or employees surf porn at work"!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
what!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]