7% of Mobile Workers Use Company’s Computers to Watch Porn

I may not fully understand behavior and motivation of a real porn lover but I can hardly imagine anyone watching porn right at the workplace - yet I was more than surprised to find out I am totally wrong. The thing is that a recent study suggests that this behavior is very possible with 3.8% of people actually admitting watching porn in the office. But while this percentage may not sound like a huge number of people, this gets much worse when employees leave office buildings with companies’ notebook to work at home or on a business trip.

Vodafone UK sponsored a survey of over a thousand of UK workers to see how they comply with IT security requirements when on the go outside of the office. The results must be more than troubling for IT managers with the majority of people seemingly forgetting about basic security rules as soon as the office door is closed behind them.

The research has shown that people tend to engage in all types of activities that are not recommended for security or financial reasons when not on their workplaces. To be more specific, 7% of mobile workers admitted visiting adult sites (10% for male respondents), 10% visited gambling sites, 15% downloaded software without prior authorization from IT manager, and as many as 19% downloaded music. All of that using a laptop or mobile device owned by their company and most certainly intended for business purposes and not for watching porn.

The potential damages here are obvious. First of all, visiting an adult site can easily expose the computer to malware which may be harmful to the corporate network. Besides, it could result in the need for IT staff to fix things they would not need to fix otherwise - and this means additional costs for the company.

Even harmless things like downloading music or watching some online TV can be dangerous if the employee is on a hotel’s Wi-Fi network when traveling as internet connection can be quite expensive in hotels in some countries. These hidden costs should better be avoided as well even if the activities may seem to be pretty innocent.

It is understandable that there are certain things people don’t even consider doing when sitting in the office with colleagues nearby - watching porn included - but these activities somehow turn into acceptable ones as soon as these employees leave the office. Obviously to deal with such issues IT managers will need to come up with new tools to ensure security. I also think that it may be a good idea to simply educate mobile workers about potential risks they are causing for the company as this can easily be unintentional and people will hardly know they are not supposed to do certain things unless they are explicitly told so.

But I also think there is a certain ethical aspect to this issue as people seem to have rather blurred understanding of their work and the difference between things that belong to the company and those that belong to them personally. For example, it is true for the time the company pays the employee for as it should be regarded as belonging to the company. Yet some people don’t even feel guilty wasting the time their employers pay them for on social networks and dealing with various personal issues.

And the same is valid for having certain equipment at your disposal - be it a laptop or a smart phone: the fact that you have this equipment with you 24/7 does not mean that you can use it the way you see fit for this equipment as there are certain security standards that should probably be complied with.

But if ethical issues still don’t bother you when you watch some quick porn on your office laptop, think about how embarrassing it will be if you forget to clear the browsing history or catch a virus on an adult site. Maybe this could be a reason enough to stick to your own computer for these activities?

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