E-mail abuse increases at work

E-mail and Internet misuse at work has become a big headache for British employers, and UK companies are increasingly disciplining staff for accessing or forwarding on pornography.

Nearly one in three British companies have disciplined staff for breaking company Internet and e-mail rules in the past year, according to the business information provider, LexisNexis.

A number of companies have begun to crack down, drafting codes of conduct in an effort to regulate employees' use of the firms' high-speed Internet connections.

The crackdown has become more important in the past year as companies have been hit by damaging computer worms and viruses planted in e-mails, most seriously the "Sobig" epidemic.

"It is a continuing headache. Employers are just getting to grips with it now and many employees are not taking it seriously enough," said Mark Crail, managing editor of LexisNexis' IRS Employment Review.

New laws addressing workers' computer rights have also become a minefield for companies, Crail added, forcing them to strengthen their codes of conduct to make clear which cyber workplace activities are off limits.

Sins of the flesh

Some companies have also installed firewalls that block access to racy Web sites and have begun to filter outgoing and incoming e-mail for pornographic images and information vital to their business.

One e-mail filtering specialist, Reading-based Clearswift, has introduced Image Manager, a software product that scans outgoing e-mails for flesh-coloured images, thus stopping suspected pornographic images from entering or leaving the corporate network.

Clearswift said Image Manager has even been used by car companies to intercept proprietary images of new car models being sent out by employees before the street release date.

"Security is not just about protecting yourself from spam and viruses, as employees are often the weakest link," said Alyn Hockey, director of research at Clearswift.

Big business

The IT intelligence and advisory firm IDC predicts that the filtering market will grow by close to 50 per cent each year, reaching $636m (£449m) world-wide by 2004.

There are now more than 30 different companies offering filtering technology, mainly US-centric, but eager to cash in on the growing demand in Europe, especially the UK and Germany.

The depth of the services on offer are mind-blowing, with companies now able to set different rules for each different user in a company of 10,000 people.

Employers can chose to veto certain categories of sites ranging from finance and investment sites to dating agencies and estate agents.

Revenue culprits

In February, the true scale of computer misuse in government departments was revealed, showing the Inland Revenue as the worst offenders.

Out of the Revenue's 70,000 staff, one was downgraded, two were given financial penalties and 199 were placed on reprimand for a series of email and internet abuse offences, according to the Treasury.

In 2002, a survey by law firm KLegal with Personnel Today magazine showed 212 firms that participated had taken disciplinary action in 358 cases for email or internet-related offences.