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From...
Recreational Web surfing at work is on the rise
August 13, 1998
Web posted at: 9:50 AM EDT
by Kathleen Ohlson
(IDG) -- Employees spend part of their workday surfing the Web for information that doesn't pertain to work--and that recreational activity has increased in the last three months, according to research compiled by SurfWatch Software, a maker of Internet content filtering software.
Almost 25 percent of employees' online time is given over to surfing the Internet for recreational purposes. SurfWatch tallied the information from Fortune 100 companies, small businesses, high-tech companies, manufacturers, and service businesses in the United States, Brazil, Colombia, and several European countries. When the company launched the service earlier this year, 18 percent of employees surfed the Web recreationally, said Theresa Marcroft, marketing director at SurfWatch.
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Currently, employees are checking general news sites (5 percent), followed by pornography (3 percent), investment (3 percent), entertainment (2 percent), and sports (1 percent), SurfWatch said.
General news and entertainment sites saw a significant increase in hits from April to July, while hits to job-search and sexually explicit sites dipped. Most popular sites were The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Playboy, Penthouse, Charles Schwab, E-Trade, Quote.com, TV Guide, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and The Sporting News.
Employees who surf the Web for their own amusement during work time are opening up a can of legal issues, according to SurfWatch. If an employee has an image from Playboy on a 36-inch monitor, it's like hanging that image in the lunchroom, Marcroft said. "It creates a hostile work environment, and [companies] are seen as condoning it." Companies are also worried that employees who enter chat rooms may divulge privileged or insider information, she said.
The number of U.S. companies with Internet use policies has increased from 30 percent in 1997 to 50 percent this year, she said. Companies are also implementing software that filters and monitors the Internet, with some getting started by blocking sexually explicit sites and monitoring the rest, she said.