Third of U.S. Employees' Web Use Monitored - Study

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Monday July 9 4:04 PM ET

Third of U.S. Employees' Web Use Monitored - Study

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than one-third of U.S. employees who browse the Web and use e-mail at work have their Internet use systematically monitored by their employers, a privacy group said on Monday.

The Privacy Foundation found employee monitoring to be growing rapidly, spurred by the cheap price of surveillance software and concerns about productivity and sexual-harassment liability.

The study found that of the 40 million U.S. workers who have Internet access in the office, 14 million, or 35 percent, are constantly monitored by their employers.

Worldwide, 27 million of the 100 million with Internet access were monitored.

Unlike earlier studies of workplace surveillance, which were based on questionnaires or surveys, the Privacy Foundation based its numbers on sales figures of monitoring software such as Websense Inc. (NasdaqNM:WBSN - news) and Baltimore Technologies Inc. (NasdaqNM:BALT - news)'s MIMEsweeper.

Surveillance software allows employers to monitor and record the Internet activity of an entire office, not just workers engaging in suspicious or potentially damaging behavior.

Federal law gives employers broad latitude to monitor their workers' activities, especially when they are using company computers or other equipment.

While the software may be cheap -- as low as $5.25 per employee -- its low cost and ease of use makes it easy for companies to overstep personal boundaries, said report author Andrew Schulman, chief researcher at the Privacy Foundation's Workplace Surveillance Project.

``We don't have cameras up in all the bathrooms to see how long people are taking to sit on the john,'' Schulman said.

Schulman said employers should give workers clear notice that their actions may be monitored, and allow them to access their records to see what information about them has been collected.

Ironically, while many companies use monitoring software to prevent employee misdeeds that might lead to sexual-harassment suits, the detailed Web logs and e-mail databases might prove a liability in other lawsuits, Schulman said.

For example, the U.S. government was able to subpoena internal Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) e-mail messages and use them to its advantage in its antitrust suit against the software maker.

``I don't know if companies have thought through these implications,'' Schulman said.

-- (I@C.U), July 10, 2001


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