Nearly 10pc of men download porn at work

Whistle while you work!

Nearly 10pc of men download porn at work

By Stephen Adams
Last Updated: 12:17pm BST 05/06/2007

# It's official - Britannia rules the web

Employees are increasingly using their work computers to download music and pornography and gossip with their colleagues, according to a study released today.

The Trust and Risk in the Workplace Study found that 31 per cent of men and 19 per cent of women download music at work, while nine per cent of men and four per cent of women take the extraordinary risk of downloading obscene videos and images.
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But the biggest vice remains using email to indulge in office gossip. Men are almost as guilty as women, with 33 per cent doing so compared to 35 per cent of their female colleagues.

Dr Monica Whitty of Queen’s University, Belfast, who led the research project, said employees are putting their organisations’ computer networks at risk with their behaviour.

Laptop users in particular are "oblivious" to the added security risks of using wireless connections to access the internet, she said.

Her survey, of 1,000 mobile and desktop employees, found that four out of five laptop users connect to the internet from outside the office and two thirds use wireless hotspots.

She warned: "Almost two thirds of our sample would blame their employer if confidential data was stolen from their work computers.

"Given that security breaches and careless mistakes can lead to the loss or theft of confidential information, employers should be cautious when it comes to protecting confidential data."

Her study looked at users in UK, the USA, Australia the Netherlands and Singapore.

It found the biggest risk in the UK is "email driven" - a fact born out by emailed computer viruses which have swept the UK such as the Melissa virus and the so-called 'Love Bug’ programme.

They brought havoc to networks by deleting and corrupting important files and programmes.

Americans are the biggest downloaders of pornography and music, she found, with Australians the least likely to download pornography at work.
[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]