Slashdot Mirror
Reporting on Your Employees' Internet Access?
kooky45 asks: "My team has recently installed content filters for my company which restrict the web sites that employees can visit. It also logs the sites they do visit; not whole URLs, just the site domain names. This has been useful for a couple of disciplinary investigations of employees suspected of wrongdoing. However, word has got round to some managers that this capability exists. They are starting to ask my team to provide lists of sites that their team members have accessed over the past few weeks, claiming they are suspicious of time wasting on the Internet and need proof. We're pushing back because of privacy concerns but the pressure is building on us. We have no experience in this area, and I'd like to ask Slashdot how other companies handle this, what the important considerations are, and where it could all go wrong?"
...and, as part of our corporate policy, any employee you request browsing history on will get a copy of YOUR browsing history.
I would guess that would limit requests.
- Tony
If your company pays for the internet access and for the machines the employees are using to access the internet, it would be foolish to feel they have any right to privacy. I don't like the idea of higher ups being able to see what I've been doing online, but I understand that since I'm using the company's internet connection and their computer (and their electricity, and the time I'm being paid to work) they can snoop in at any time. God save us all if they discover how much time people spend on /.
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
We were told at one company that I worked at that the supervisors had the ability to spy on our desktops to see what we're doing. A new supervisor rushed over to my cube to tell me that looking at Amazon was against company policy and he caught me red handed (it was still on the screen after being there for only a minute). I pointed out that 1) I was on my break with a breakfast burrito in hand, 2) the entire company knows I get stuff delivered from Amazon, and 3) my last supervisor gave me an Amazon gift certificate at the completion of my last project. He went off mad when I told him to bugger off. This is the same management team that couldn't find the computer that had 300+ virus/trojan horses/spyware that kept bringing down the network every three days for the past month.
:P
Besides, I did all my non-work web browsing on my PDA using the wireless link from the company next door. Do you know how hard it was to type a Slashdot comment on a tiny virtual keyboard?
at my current company for this reason. I work for a p0rn company and they have a policy against using the internet for non-work related stuff. I got a warning for reading cnn.com.
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
I'm sure somewhere, you could find people who would be willing to let you beat them with a rubber hose on a daily basis; they'd just be very expensive. (If they had any other skills besides 'will allow self to be beaten regularly.') Hey, some of us would do that for free. :)