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Managing Director and CTO of Dicontas Limited.
Passionate about Technology.

Surfing porn can still get you fired

In the workplace, it can be sexual harassment

Bad taste makes the day go by faster. –Andy Warhol

The Internet enables people to watch more pornography than ever before, even at work. Adult films gross more than Hollywood. However, despite its rising popularity, it hasn’t become any more acceptable to the mainstream and is often part of sexual harassment in the workplace.

When business was slow, Greg Backman, a supervisor at Maritime Paper Products, would surf sex sites on his office computer up to three hours a day. The company never complained Backman was gratifying himself instead of performing his job. Neither did any of the people he supervised. On the contrary, the company was satisfied with the job he was doing.

It kept giving him raises and excellent reviews. Backman must have truly been talented to get his work done while surfing the Web for sex for hours a day. The company, like many employers, had an “Acceptable Use Policy” for work computers. Surfing for sex sites wasn’t one of them. At the same time, it was aware of Backman’s habit.

Several years earlier, he was warned to stop watching pornography at work or he would be fired but no one ever followed through on the warning. His great ratings continued. The company finally pulled the plug when a woman from the company’s Manager of Information Services complained. Her job was to monitor everyone’s computer use which required her to look at the images on Backman’s computer, most of which were explicit images of young women engaged in sex acts. She told the company she found the images highly offensive. Maritime immediately fired Backman.

The court sided with the company. Justice McLellan of the New Brunswick Queens Bench stated, by displaying sexual images on his work computer, Backman was sexually harassing the woman in Information Services. In law, Maritime had a duty to protect her. It could not permit Backman to surf pornographic sites at work if it meant female co-workers would see it and be offended. Besides, Backman was warned and knew the risk he was running.

The company did the right thing by firing Backman because he placed the company at risk to be sued by the woman in Information Services for allowing him to sexually harass her. The lessons for employers are clear:

- Pornography in the workplace is not harmless entertainment. If an employee views pornography on a work computer, the employer may have cause for termination.

- If other employees are, in the course of their job, forced to see another employee’s pornography collection, it can lead to claims of sexual harassment.

- Employers should make it clear to all employees that work computers cannot be used to view pornography or any material that might offend other employees. This protects the employer from claims it permitted sexual harassment and strengthens the employer’s hand in firing employees that refuse to stop.

- Canadian News

Written on 22 January 2010 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Stories with Comments Off
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10k inappropriate images found on county council computers

ALMOST 10,000 “inappropriate” images have been found on Notts County Council staff’s computers.

They were found when 1 in 8 of the authority’s computers were scanned in an £82,000 investigation.

More than 2,700 of the images were “highly inappropriate”, a category including graphic pornography and pictures “which may cause distress or psychological harm to an unexpected viewer”.

The extent of the investigation was revealed in the results of a Freedom of Information request made by the Evening Post.

The council said that 3 members of staff were sacked.

No illegal images were found, but police were informed after one employee tried to view “inappropriate material” online. No arrest was made.

Another worker resigned after viewing pornography, four were given warnings, two were suspended and five are still under investigation.

Documents show that officers considered halting the investigation because of the likely scale of the problem.

One letter to senior officers said: “The authority’s counselling service is available for managers who may wish to use this service should they find difficulty in dealing with the subject matter.

“It is possible that some images will be of a severe nature, with the potential to cause distress to the viewer.”

Pornographic websites are blocked but images are believed to have been circulated by e-mail and put on council computers with memory sticks.

The council started its investigation in May last year and used a program called PixAlert to scan PCs.

Councillors’ computers will be scanned during the next phase of the investigation.
Results showed the percentage of computers with inappropriate images to be below average so far.

Notts County Council decided to issue a press statement to all local media the day before the Evening Post received the results of the Freedom of Information request.

A staff memo, written in June 2008, said: “It is quite clear that this is a highly sensitive issue which has repercussions in a number of areas, the main being the reputation of the authority should this situation come to the light of the public.”

Chief executive Mick Burrows said the investigation would continue for another year, adding: “We have a sophisticated filtering system which greatly reduces the chances of staff being able to download highly inappropriate material from the internet.

“However, we have less control on highly inappropriate images that are viewed on council computers which come from an e-mail attachment, memory sticks or any other devices.”

Council leader Coun Kay Cutts said: “Viewing this kind of material on office computers is totally unacceptable.  I am pleased that senior officers have been proactive in dealing with staff who flout the rules.”

Written on 22 January 2010 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Stories with Comments Off
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ISPs now keep your history for 12 months

Monday 6th April 2008 was the date that a new EU directive was forced upon all UK Internet Service Providers (ISP) to keep a record of all your email, internet and other online communications for the previous 12 months.  This communication tracking database is enforced by the UK Government and paid for by the UK taxpayer.

ISPs now have to record and store who has sent an email to whom, and which websites their customers have visited – all with timestamps.

Bodies which are covered by phone tap law the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) will be able to request a court order for the release of the data.

They say that no content is to be recorded, only…

IP Address History: ISPs will be forced to retain data on what communications were made from which internet protocol (IP) address or phone number, what the destination of that communication was, and its duration.

Mobile phone calls: include information on which cell within a network a call was made from. This will give authorities an indication of the user’s location at the time of the call.

Web History: the addresses of web pages visited do not need to be stored under the new rules. For internet access, ISPs only need to store the dates and times of a user connecting to the internet and disconnecting; the internet protocol (IP) address allocated to the user; and the user ID of the customer.

Email Messages: sender and recipient(s) addresses and time of all messages – together with IP Address.

[Author Comment: There has been no released details as to whether the 'Subject Title' of email messages are also recorded]

The Reason For this new law:  national securty and anti-terrorism measures – fair enough.  But to allow local governments to ‘catch fly-tippers’.  I am not a fly-tipper, and do not know anyone who has confessed verbally, so why would they start to confess online?  Is there an online confession box that I do not know about?  Bet you that other ‘debt-management-chasing’ companies will register to gain access to this new database to allow them to start chasing consumers with bad credit histories whom cannot be found by any other method.

All it takes is a formal request using the RIP Act to get access to these details.

Written on 08 April 2009 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Monitoring, News with Comments Off

Three Irishmen joke turns into 30 BT Staff…

30 staff at BT face being sacked for e-mailing a ‘light-hearted’ joke which poked fun at the Irish.

The BT call centre workers have been suspended after a colleague complained the joke could be viewed as racist.

Managers at BT are now investigating the claim but employees have accused them of using the incident as an excuse to cut staffing levels without making payoffs.

Read more at Metro

Written on 24 February 2009 by Dicontas Blog Admin under News with Comments Off
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Media Interest Increases 15% In Employment Disputes

Almost every day there seems to be yet another high profile employment case in the newspapers. Why is this? Well, firstly there are more cases going through the Employment Tribunals, where an increase of 15% was recorded in the most recent figures published. Given the economic climate it can only be expected that the number will rise again in 2009.

Generally speaking, employment disputes attract media coverage because they have a very strong human element which is attractive to Editors, who understand what their readers are interested in and relate to. Typically, the claimant will be portrayed by the media as something of a David battling a corporate Goliath and taking on deeply entrenched vested interests.

The media will usually focus on alleged wrong doings by the employer, how the employee claims to have been treated, the perceived culture of the workplace, allegations of extreme bad behaviour such as drug abuse and, of course, whatever sum they decide to report as being claimed money-wise.

Allegations of sexual misconduct would also feature in these stories, were it not for ET rules and the issuance of Restricted Reporting Orders (RROs) in such cases. If the defendant in question is a household name, such as a bank, a FTSE 100 company or a celebrity, then you can expect media interest to intensify dramatically.

Even a cursory news search will reveal numerous examples of how the media feed off employment disputes. Mona Awad, a Muslim bank manager who claims she was accused of trying to sleep her way to the top is suing Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) for damages of £16.7m for sex, race and religious discrimination. This was widely reported in the national newspapers, both tabloid and broadsheet. The case is being dealt with by Nottingham Employment Tribunal.

Read more from Mondaq

Written on 24 February 2009 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Law & Legal Issues, News with Comments Off
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Email libel costs £110k for University

A single email message has cost the University of Salford £110,000 after it alleged fraud in an expenses claim. Dr Tom McMaster, a lecturer in business management at Salford University, submitted an expense claim of £180 after receiving permission to sail his boat to a conference in Galway rather than fly.

However, after submitting his claim he received a response from the accounts department:

“Clearly the original claim was an attempted fraud and appropriately rejected.”

“Those who submitted and certified it should be ashamed of themselves.”

However, the email message was also sent to other members of his department and as a result constituted libel.

McMaster took the case to the High Court to clear his name. After failing to have the case dismissed, the university settled out of court for £10,000 but will have to pay up to £100,000 in costs.

A spokeswoman for Salford University said: “The university has reached a settlement with Dr McMaster and we cannot comment on any outstanding grievance issues concerning him.”

The case highlights the importance of following correct email procedure and the vulnerability of organisations to action if it is not followed.

Had the email message been sent solely to Dr. McMaster there would have been no case to answer but by distributing it to others the organisation opened itself up to libel action.

Original Post from vnunet.com

Written on 26 August 2008 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Law & Legal Issues with Comments Off
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Nearly 50% of UK firms fire abusive emailers

Almost half of UK companies have dismissed employees over the past year due to e-mail abuse and over half regularly keep tabs on employees’ use of e-mail to make sure they remain compliant with company policy, a survey has found.

The survey also found that nearly half of the UK’s companies conducted investigations into e-mail leaks of confidential or sensitive data over the same period. These figures show that UK companies are more suspicious of and more rigorous in checking employees’ use of e-mail than their counterparts in Germany and France.

Research carried out by Forrester on behalf of e-mail security firm Proofpoint found that 44% of UK companies had fired employees in the past year because of violation of e-mail policies while 78% of them had disciplined workers for the same offence.

It also found that 53% of UK companies surveyed regularly audited outbound e-mail content while 47% have investigated a leak in the last year.

Companies’ principal worries about e-mail use are that employees could be breaking financial disclosure or corporate governance rules, could be leaking intellectual property or trade secrets, could be leaking sensitive memos or could be breaching privacy regulations.

The report highlights “the convenience and ubiquity of e-mail as a business communications tool” and acknowledges that e-mail has “exposed enterprises to a wide variety of legal, financial and regulatory risks associated with outbound email”. The report continues, “Enterprises continue to express a high level of concern about creating, managing and enforcing outbound messaging policies.”

Written on 02 June 2008 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Compliance, Surveys with Comments Off
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Other Recent Posts:

  1. Surfing porn can still get you fired - 22nd Jan 2010
  2. 10k inappropriate images found on county council computers - 22nd Jan 2010
  3. ISPs now keep your history for 12 months - 8th Apr 2009
  4. Three Irishmen joke turns into 30 BT Staff... - 24th Feb 2009
  5. Media Interest Increases 15% In Employment Disputes - 24th Feb 2009
  6. Email libel costs £110k for University - 26th Aug 2008
  7. Nearly 50% of UK firms fire abusive emailers - 2nd Jun 2008
  8. Email Compliance and the use of Email Filtering - 31st Dec 2007
  9. Email spam - becoming sound practice! - 7th Nov 2007
  10. Email Security (Encryption) 2007 Review - 2nd Oct 2007
  11. Lost emails cause 5m hours of IT Management time - 25th Sep 2007
  12. Turning your email address into a phone call - 6th Sep 2007
  13. links for 2007-08-21 - 21st Aug 2007
  14. Sitemap - 21st Aug 2007
  15. Trend Micro joins the SaaS team for email protection - 14th Aug 2007