Half of those Americans with Internet access at work mistakenly believe their employer would not be held liable for any offensive material workers distribute via the Internet from the office, says a recent study, "Internet Usage at Work," conducted by Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Yankelovich Partners for surfCONTROL, a provider of Web filtering solutions. The Internet's popularity among workers who spend extensive amounts of their workday shopping, chatting, sending personal e-mail or viewing video files has the potential to clog a company's Internet connection, the company says, making it harder for other employees to conduct company business efficiently.
Personal Web activity also exposes employers to serious liability problems for the use of the company's Internet connection to send sexually explicit material, illegal software or other offensive matter, says the company. Workers engaged in those activities could place their employer at the center of a sexual harassment lawsuit or copyright infringement action.
Some 62% of workers with Internet access use the computer network for personal reasons at least once every workday, while the average worker uses the Internet 3.1 times per workday for personal reasons. About one-fifth of Internet users surveyed use their company Internet connection ten or more times a day for personal purposes.
Workers do so despite the fact that 71% of them consider it at least somewhat likely that a supervisor is aware they are using the Internet for personal reasons on the job, the survey indicates. Almost half consider it "very likely" or "extremely likely" that they're being monitored.
Workers also know that their personal use of the Internet at work consumes bandwidth, and nearly three-quarters of workers with Internet access know their personal use is slowing the company down, Yankelovich Partners says.
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