Detecting Porn Tool for the Workplace

[Lee]

You'd better watch out Dusty, dont want you looking at porn while you are supposed to be working LOL

Regards,

Lee

[basschick]

i always look at porn while i'm working

in all seriousness, i know guys who get paid over $100,000 a year and spend at least 2 hours a day surfing porn. and Dusty, they DON'T have the spare time to do it - they do it while they both have work to do and are getting paid to do it. and since they tend to be higher end management, no one is sitting over their shoulder. still, there should be better ways.

nevertheless, i am 100% sure this program will cause programs. a woman will send her husband a pic of their baby wearing only a diaper or a guy will send his friend a pic of him posing at a bodybuilding contest or someone will send a pic of him and some buddies at the beach in bathing suits and the pics will be seen as scantily clothed and set off alerts.

[gaybucks_chip]

A company I used to consult for had SurfControl, which was a pretty good system that monitored internet usage and, depending on how it was set, could block sites either by category (sports, news, humor, movie, porn, etc) or through individually installed blocks.

I was responsible for implementing it when we got it, and I found it to be pretty flexible and pretty reasonable... you could turn off any or all the filters during lunch hours, for example, or before or after work... and once people knew that management was getting a report of who was visiting sites that were outside of our guidelines for work-related browsing, the Internet usage dropped dramatically and actually we were able to delay adding more bandwidth to our Internet connection.

More recently, I had to block Myspace from one of our recent employee's computers because he was simply incapable of not checking his myspace (and everyone elses) every 15 minutes, in spite of multiple warnings. Ultimately, he ended up not working out because he was just too unfocused in general, but the block did help his productivity.

I think that, used wisely, this sort of filtration can be helpful to an employer, both in terms of increasing productivity and in reducing risk of sexual harassment claims and so forth. But it all depends on whether it's used reasonably and responsibly, or as a witch-hunt. Considering it's coming out of a company in Utah, they would probalby like to stamp out all porn and marginally questionable content from the earth, so I'm not sure that I necessarily support this company... but the idea itself isn't really a bad one.