Responding to potlicker @
morebbs .
com, who said:
>
> Wankers PLC did a study of what their users are accessing during business
> hours. They found that 20 percent of all Internet access from their company
> is viewing pornographic materials.
Although we haven't performed any analysis of our proxy log files, I wouldn't
be surprised if our company figures were the same. Of course, the term
"pornographic" is VERY subjective.
We estimate that somewhere around 80% of our Internet accesses are non-business
related. Rather than spending time and effort and money trying to stop it,
we're encouraging our user community to avoid such use during business hours.
The issue is an old one, and it's a management issue, IMHO.
> Now they are chewing their finger nails
> and trying to decide who to blame.
The users, of course. Nobody forces them to look at pornography.
> The obvious approach would be to block
> access to the porno sites on their firewalls.
Which is impossible. New sites spring up daily. Unless you want to hire
someone whose sole responsibility is examining every site touched by the
users (by extension, every newsgroup, every mailing list, every IRC channel,
every FTP site), and then continuously update a gargantuan blocklist/killfile
of some sort. There ARE companies that do such things, but as I said
above, ours isn't one of them.
> How do other companies handle
> this issue?
This is no different than Playboy in the desk drawer, or faxing dirty jokes
around the world. Our Internet Policy allows for "incidental use" of the
Internet for personal reasons -- just as we allow for "incidental use" of
the telephone for personal reasons. If users get out of control, we can
track and provide information to management as to who is abusing their
privileges.
Letting the users BELIEVE that you are monitoring everything they do is
a wonderful tool as well -- whether or not it's true.
--
Scott Cokely |* The Internet interprets censorship as damage, *
Silicon Systems, Inc. |* and ROUTES AROUND IT. *
scott .
cokely @
tus .
ssi1 .
com |***************************************************
require "disclaimer.pl"; | I'd love to help but my head is full of birdseed
---------------------------- and my pants are glued to this chair.
The above are my opinions only and not necessarily those of my employer, or
it's parent company.
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