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Pornographic Spam And The Workplace
dolo666 writes "The BBC posted an article about how UK legal experts are warning businesses to take a more active role in the prevention of pornographic spam. If you get an explicit email, how exactly do you show it to your boss, without looking guilty yourself?"
I don't think it's clear at all. Should an employer be responsible because someone decides to randomly mail dead-tree copies of porn magazines to their employees ? Or because some individual decides to make a random sexually explicit phone call to one of their phone numberS ?
(IANAL, if in the above situations employers *are* supposed to be responsible, then it's just another good example of the stupidity of the law.)
The part about "looking guilty yourself" refers to the fact that many bosses are going to blame you for being on the spammers email list. As stated in the article, there are plenty of reasons (not necessarily good ones) for assuming that receiving pornographic spam is the end result of visiting porn sites on company time. A lot of bosses aren't even aware of the email harvesting that spam-bots do. If you start telling your boss "I'm receiving a lot of porno spam" and no one else is telling them that, a typical PHB -- consciously or unconscously looking to minimze their work and/or liability -- is going to assume you're the only one receiving this stuff. It has nothing to do with forwarding the actual content to your superior.
GMD
watch this
If you get an explicit email, how exactly do you show it to your boss, without looking guilty yourself?
why would you be showing your boss your spam?
* delete it upon arrival
* use some spam filtering software of some sort, forward the spam to him/her
* don't let your work email get onto the internet unless you're ready for lots of porn spam
* virtually everyone gets porn spam, don't worry too much.
1)The UK's new and shiny anti-spam legislation will only protect personal inboxes, not those of businesses. This effectively means that workers have not legal protection against inbox pornography
2) Anyone with a corporate email address that's been around for a while is likely to get 90% spam or more, assuming the company doesn't filter their mail. Especially as these are often unmunged on the web.
3) You have to read your email to do your job.
In other words, employees have no choice but to look at porn in order to do their work. In that situation, the primary duty of the company is to care for their employees. My university account gets tonnes of explicit email, some of which (like bestiality) is still sort of illegal in the UK. If I had to read it to do my job, i'd be pretty pissed off.
Long run, I hope companies will try and pass any incurred costs to the spammers themselves via civil action. Hopefully, it'll help unite the business community against spam.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson
We don't hassle people about porno spam or the occasional mis-navigation to www..com.
You obvioulsy didn't read the article... This is about some guy meaning that companies can expect lawsuits from employees because the company doesn't do enough to protect their employees from spam...
I'm not pro spam in any way, but this is crazy!
-- If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
That's just it -- forwarding it to the local IT guy (unless you're the type of user that makes an ass of himself) explaining that you haven't a clue as to where they got your email, etc would be enough to CYA.
As for "assuming that receiving pornographic spam is the end result of visiting porn sites on company time" - uhm, simply visiting a pr0n site while on the clock isn't going to instantly give someone your email address.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Next time, hire responsible employees, and you won't have to waste your time and money monitoring them.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Maybe its just me, but it seems that no one has any sort of skin these days. At the first sign of anything that might offend them, they scream, "sue!" Why don't people toughen up a bit and realize that they are going to be exposed to things that may be contrary to thier sensabilities? You have an email address, and its on the corporate web site? Then you should expect that its going to get spammed at some point, and some of it may be offensive. Delete it, deal with it, and move on for fucks sake! There is a great big world out there, and most of it doesn't give a tinker's damn about you. The rest of it just wants your money, if you can't handle a little bit of emotional distress now and again, how do you ever expect to survive?
Sorry for the rant, but people without the slightest bit of ability to cope with stress piss me off. I have four words for the people involved with this sort of lawsuit, FUCKING DEAL WITH IT!!!
Ah, I feel better. Please forward all complaints to: FuckYou@I.Do.Not.Care.com
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.