Companies bite into Net surfing

Amy Bryer, Special to The Rocky

Published September 3, 2007 at midnight

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The average employee spends more than an hour a day surfing the Internet on company computers, according to a Harris Interactive survey.

Fifty percent of those employees would rather give up their morning coffee than give up their ability to surf the Web at work.

Nearly half said they would more likely lose their job for visiting an adult- content site than sleeping at their desk. But all that is starting to change.

Most employees would never consider standing in their boss's office to gaze at an adult magazine or sit at their desk to deal a hand of poker.

But many workers are doing exactly that when they surf the Internet on their office computers.

Companies afraid of downloaded viruses, liability issues and low productivity are increasingly monitoring and, in many cases, blocking their employees' Internet activities.

"These days, employers are watching every key stroke and every screen displayed," said John Soma, executive director of the Privacy Foundation at the University of Denver.

Internet use has become an integral part of the workday, but employers have found that their workers are spending an increasing amount of time downloading their favorite songs, watching the latest Paris Hilton video and checking the weather instead of working on that important customer.

"I'm completely obsessed with celebrity news. I like to brag I broke the news about Anna Nicole to my office before CNN because I kept refreshing my screen," said Valeria Quintanilla, marketing manager with Westminster-based Booyah Networks. "I check the headlines every couple hours. I only scan for about 30 seconds, but I do it fairly frequently. It's a diversion to break up my day."

The response from some business owners has been to block sites they deem inappropriate or a security or liability risk. Employees receive a message on their screen that their desired site cannot be accessed.

The most common prohibited sites are gambling and pornography. It's no secret to employees that they shouldn't go to those sites.

Many companies have taken a step beyond blocking gaming and adult-content Web sites and included downloaded music such as iTunes and streaming video sites such as YouTube, to name a few.

"No gambling, no chatting, no photos," said Brian Haffey, director of IT for OZ Architecture. "A line I like to use is, 'Don't use language that you wouldn't use at the dinner table with your grandmother, or you will be blocked.' "

OZ even blocked fantasy football sites and Web sites for the corresponding springtime event, the NCAA basketball championship.

"The fantasy football sites are very popular - even my own IT guys are asking me to open those sites up," Haffey said.

The level of restrictions on Internet use can vary widely by company and industry.

Law firms such as Denver- based Holland & Hart will have no limitations on Internet use because their attorneys require the Web for research.

On the other hand, businesses such as stock brokerages have some of the most stringent restrictions.

Charles Schwab Corp. allows for "incidental" personal use that permits a phone call or Internet use for personal research, said Sarah Bulgatz, director of corporate public relations.

The brokerage firm blocks gaming, pornography and hate speech, as well as instant messages and personal e-mail. Work-related e-mail is recorded.

"We work in a highly regulated industry in which we need to be able to archive all e-mails," Bulgatz said.

That level of scrutiny also can be observed in the public sector.

All city employees in Denver can have their communication devices monitored at any time, said spokeswoman Ann Williams.

"The public sector needs to be transparent," she said. "Any device, whether it be a BlackBerry, cell phone, or computer that is for official use is subject to monitoring. There is no expectation of privacy when you use any electronic device."

Many private companies try not to appear as hard-nosed about surfing on the job.

Denver-based Jupiter Consolidated, which owns furniture retailer Officescapes, mandated that its 285 employees sign an "acceptable use" policy this past February. The company's IT director said the policy makes his job easier.

Before the policy was instituted, Darius Lovitt and his IT department spent a lot of time trying to clean off spyware from company computers that surfing employees had unknowingly infected.

Sophisticated spyware and keylogging Web sites can capture confidential business and personal information that can be costly to the company and its employees.

The acceptable-use policy has freed up IT resources and helps Lovitt if he finds content on an employee's machine that violates the agreement.

"We don't want to be thugs about it," Lovitt said. "It's a friendly company, and we want people to be happy. They can download songs to their local machine, but just get it off the server."

OZ architecture also has an acceptable-use policy, but the company doesn't regularly keep track of employee Internet activity.

"We can monitor, but we don't because it's an honor system," Haffey said.

The IT manager has only encountered two incidents of employee abuse in seven years. His ability to drop three reams of paper on an employee's desk listing all the Web sites the worker has visited for the past six months works as an effective deterrent for Internet surfing abuse.

"I don't care if you're getting e-mails from your kids," Haffey said. "But if you're being paid $35 an hour and you're shopping for Christmas, what am I paying you for?"

44.7 percent of 10,000 employees surveyed by Salary.com in 2005 said Internet surfing was their primary time-wasting activity, followed by socializing with co-workers.

Popular sites

The top 10 most-frequented nonwork-related Internet sites accessed at work, according to IT managers

1 Weather

2 Map sites

3 News

4 Shopping

5 Banking

6 Travel

7 Sports

8 Personal e-mail

9 Auction

10 EducationalSource: Harris Interactive Survey

Are you being watched?

Companies afraid of downloaded viruses, liability issues and low productivity are increasingly monitoring and, in many cases, blocking their employees' Internet activities. "These days, employers are watching every keystroke and every screen displayed," said John Soma, executive director of the Privacy Foundation at the University of Denver. Some would say they have good reason to, considering the statistics provided by one Harris Interactive survey:

$127,400 is the average financial loss per company due to Internet security breaches.

The larger the company, the larger the impact.

$15,000 is the average loss for small companies.

$41,000 is the average loss for medium companies.

$195,100 is the average loss for large companies.Note: A Small Company Is Defined As 100 To 500 Workers; A Medium Company 501-1,000 Workers; And A Large Company 1,000-Plus Workers.

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