PCA Forums

Survey: Porn Found Often on Work Computers

By JUSTIN BACHMAN

Many of us apparently forget that our office computer belongs to the boss - along with all the Internet material you may load onto it.

Two-thirds of human resources professionals said in a survey they've discovered pornography on employee computers. Nearly half of those, 43 percent, said they had found such material more than once.

The poll points to a common employer dilemma: the need to balance employee privacy with electronic monitoring of computer content, according to Alexandra Gross, legal editor for Business & Legal Reports, a publisher based in Old Saybrook, Conn.

"One of the most important things employers can do to protect themselves from privacy suits is to reduce employees' expectations of privacy in the first place," she said. "The best way to do that is to articulate a clear policy on electronic monitoring and computer use."

Companies also must be very clear that e-mail and Internet access are the employer's property - and recreational Web browsing should be left at home.

The online poll was conducted by the two sites earlier this month. It drew responses from 474 people.
story link

Originally posted by bellringer

Many of us apparently forget that our office computer belongs to the boss - along with all the Internet material you may load onto it.

we don't forget, every time we log in we need to say ok to a pop up "This compute and it's contents are the property of Arrow Electronics Inc" or something like that

See, I wonder how much of this is <i>actual</i> porn and not some porn add that pops up when they are bored and lookin' up cracks at warez sites.

i've seen ALOT of stuff people shouldn't have on work pc's. it amazes me that there are still that many stupid people that think it's ok, or just "didn't know" it was wrong, etc...or that think they won't get busted eventually.

First off, when I worked for my last employer (I own my own business now) I owned my own computer.

I computerized in '89 before anyone at the office even knew WTF a computer was. I asked the company to buy me one. They refused so I bought my own (yes I made enough to warrant it and it made my job manageable).

I was their sound engineer then (before I also started wearing the IT engineer cap). I had to manage my own department, write proposals, design sound systems (thank God for TurboCAD!), send letters and faxes, and my office moved 3 times each year to whichever race track was open (my whole office had to be moved overnight each time).

Later when the company started computerizing and offered to buy me a computer I told them to bugger off. I didn't need anyone at corporate telling me what I could and couldn't do with my computer, and the files were mine.

Even when I moved to the main office as their chief IT engineer, I brought my own computer with me.

HOWEVER, all that being said, I never kept anything on my office computer I didn't want to be embarressed by or would compromise my job.

Nowadays with corporate LANs being so carefully watch-dogged, it's very foolish to keep any questionable files on your office system.

It is also in your best interest to install your own pop-up blocker and purge your cache and history nightly. I've heard of plenty cases where unintentional porn-site pop-ups would hijaack someone's browser and then management would find the references in their history or images in their cache and use that against them.

It's only common sense. Don't leave copies of Hustler sitting on your desk....

heh this is my backround on my work pc
no one really cares

I'm assuming your job is prominently males. Otherwise, you'd have fenmenists all over your ass for that I work for a school district and they trust me enough to let me have keys to every building in the township, but after a year working with them they still haven't given me a nametag.

TheSovereign, you are lucky, but anyone including males can find it offensive and turn your ass in. In the early 70's when I started working, it was perfectly normal for guys to have Playboy pinups in cabinets and such. No one complained. Thrity years later, it's a different environment my friend. If I had that pic on my pc, I would be fired on the spot, and I'm sure most other companies would do the same. Why? Because they don't want lawsuites.

Our company knows that on occation, you will get pop-up porn from various sites that might have offers but redirect you to a porn site pop-up. What they do is to monitor you for several weeks, and if they get you going back to the site then they can fire you on the spot. The stupid people are the ones that go to porn sites and begin printing what they see on a network printer LOL. We had 5 people in the last 2 years get fired just for that. How dumb can you be.

Originally posted by Executioner
The stupid people are the ones that go to porn sites and begin printing what they see on a network printer LOL. We had 5 people in the last 2 years get fired just for that. How dumb can you be.

:laugh now that is funny, they just have no clue

We still have girly calendars and such around our shop at work... got one hanging right up above the screen of the H15 Mazak i'm working on... hard to concentrate on programming when yer lookin' at a pair of DD's

Nope..none since the smack down occurred in a certain deptartment. That along with some annoying filters that filter out almost everything....example: anything with a game name (video)

actually their are many women where i work
no one really says anything
i guess im hard to approach about sensitivity since im always talking politics and how i would destroy stuff

one time i sat down at my chair and their was a memo on it with some URL
and the url pointed to a site thats title was
"What is a control freak?" and it listed a buncha stuff
im guessing someone was hinting something
and ive been told on occasion that im a

"trip to work with"

absolute talent has met me
abso am i a control freak?

To date, the PC that I use at work accesses the 'net at about 42K (56K modem) SO I hardly have patience there to think about waiting that long to see any pics. Many web sites (like many threads here with pics posted at times) take too long for me. Having cable at home has spoiled me, it's either instant or I'm not bothering with it at work.
Now, the parts department has a high speed phone line connection so those guys are often DLing porn and videos, rather than doing their jobs and there's no one in management who cares. The owner lives over 1000 miles away in Florida, just collects the profits.

I'm amazed at how may IT departments don't block that content.

I work for a state University so the pipe is wide open. We are not allowed to block anything, but then again I am the network admin so I'm the only one who is going to tell on me!