You've Got to Be Kidding!: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity

Is Porn at Work Really a Problem?

Big time. The Nielsen Company, which tracks media statistics, reports that 21 million Americans accessed adult Web sites on computers at work in March 2010. That’s 29 percent of working adults in a typical month. Some more alarming problems:

• Seventy percent of traffic to porn Web sites occurs during the work day.
• About 65 percent of U.S. companies attempt to block employees’ access to inappropriate sites, but frequently fail because of the widespread use of portable devices like laptops and cell phones.

You may ask, “What’s the harm?” The same-old, same-old: money.

First, pornography is clear-cut evidence of sexual harassment (that’s why most employers have a zero-tolerance standard today). Enough employers have been financially stung for tolerating it to make this an easy policy decision.

Second, information technology (IT) managers report that adult Web sites are frequently the source of computer viruses, malware, and spyware—all of which have the potential to degrade the company’s network security. Personnel managers state that they often become aware of a porn problem simply because a person’s computer crashes so often. “We have a tough enough time keeping the bad guys out,” says one IT executive. “When someone inside the company is actively trying to disable or work around our security measures to get to porn sites, our job becomes much more difficult—and the damage is much more expensive to fix.”

Back to our problem in Houston . . .

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