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Pulling the Internet plug
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July 16, 1999: 7:24 a.m. ET
Corporate America sets up Web blocks to curtail employee surfing
By Staff Writer Shelly K. Schwartz
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Admit it. You surf the Web when the boss isn't looking.
Maybe you trade stocks or peruse the latest sports scores. Or perhaps you squeeze in some online shopping during your lunch hour.
Whatever your pleasure, information technology observers say you should enjoy it while it lasts. The growing popularity of Web site blocking technology suggests it's only a matter of time before Big Brother -- in the form of your boss -- shuts you down.
"All employers, including the federal government, are very concerned about productivity issues, but also with not infringing on individual rights," said Edward J. Boudreau, chairman and chief executive of John Hancock Funds "So I think censorship on the employer level is legitimate. It eliminates conflict."
Boudreau said John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., the parent of John Hancock Funds, is currently deciding which Web site blocking software it will install.
The one selected, he said, will ultimately force workers to cut out unrelated Web browsing on company time.
"Not on my machine"
John Hancock Funds is not alone.
Experts say "access denied" messages are popping up on computer screens across the country as Corporate America breaks out the big guns in its war against cyberspace.
Using new software programs, employers can easily block from their networks any sites or groups of sites they choose, including porn, sports, stock trading and electronic retailers.
When workers tell the search engine to go to Macy's home page for example, they might instead be treated to a message that reads like this:
"Your attempt to access this Web site has been blocked by a commercial database designed to categorize Web sites based upon their content. Access to this site has a low probability of being business related."
Some go on to say the block for that site can be permanently overridden if it's needed for business purposes, telling users to click on a mailbox on the screen. Others do not.
It's all in how the company sets it up.
Steve Shannon, chief executive officer of Web blocking software maker Content Advisor, said most programs sold to parents and teachers that block Web site content from children are installed on the computer's hard drive. Some computer-savvy children, however, are able to disarm the block, he said.
Content Advisor's blocking software, however, is designed for corporate clients and is embedded into the server's firewall. That means there's no getting around it.
"That's why it's at the server level and not on their desktop," Shannon said.
Using Content Advisor's software, companies can prevent specific sites or groups of sites from crossing into their network. They can also open up access to the Net for a few hours out of the day -- during lunch hours for example. The software does not block or track e-mail.
Since it was founded a year ago, Shannon said Content Advisor's customer base has grown 100 percent to 200 percent a month.
The company has categorized some 1.9 million Web sites under broad headings like sports, travel, porn, news and shopping.
"We usually advise employers to be a bit flexible in the times of days they block, and which sites," Shannon said. "They don't want to be too heavy-handed."
Preemptive strike
Thomas P. Vartanian, chairman of financial services and technology practice for Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson law firm in Washington, said a growing percentage of companies are beginning to monitor and block Internet activity by employees.
They do so for lots of reasons. But mainly, he said, they are looking to safeguard themselves against future lawsuits and protect proprietary information.
"Corporations may find themselves ultimately liable or responsible for, or its reputation affected by, what its employees are doing online," Vartanian said. "Not only that, but the science of corporate espionage has become far easier to commit, which has caused more companies to redouble their efforts in the protection of their information."
Productivity is no small concern either.
"Guys who wouldn't be caught dead in the office looking at adult sites have no trouble looking at sports scores for four hours," Shannon said.
Electronic monitoring
Internet blocking, the latest speed bump on the information superhighway, takes the concept of electronic monitoring one step further. According to estimates, at least one-third of large employers track the Web surfing activity of their employees regularly.
Many, too, have reserved the right to monitor the e-mail conversations of employees.
That may sound like a privacy rights lawsuit waiting to happen, but lawyers say those actions are well within a company's rights. And just so you know, they don't have to tell you they're doing it.
The Electronic Communication Privacy Act made it a criminal offense to access communications or database systems without permission, but it specifically allows employers to monitor the e-mail and Internet browsing activities of employees using company-owned equipment.
Because the boundaries of the law are still being tested in the courts, however, most lawyers advise employers who track the Web surfing activities of their employees to be up front from the start.
"Employers have the right to monitor what their employees are doing on the Internet, telephone and computers and they can do it without telling them," said George B. Trubow, director of the center for information and privacy law at John Marshall Law School in Chicago. "But that's not a wise thing to do."
In related court cases where employers were sued for privacy violations, Trubow said some judges have held that employers should have stopped reading workers' e-mails and other transmissions as soon as they learned it was a private message.
That doesn't mean they should shy away from electronic monitoring either, though.
"I think an employer would be foolhardy not to put in some reasonable monitoring programs, because after all he's got to protect the assets of his business," Trubow said, "especially if there is sensitive proprietary information."
Rita Risser, author of "Stay Out of Court" and an employment law attorney with Fair Measures legal consulting firm in Santa Cruz, Calif., agrees.
Most of her clients, she said, are high-tech firms that track the number of hours their employees spend on line each month. The reports even indicate which sites they log onto.
"I think employers would be crazy not to monitor," Risser said. "There's always going to be a few bad apples and this is a way to catch them early."
She noted, however, that employers should be careful their monitoring practices do not become a crutch.
"I think a lot of times, electronic monitoring is easier than being a good manager," Risser said. "It's easier to fire somebody for abusing an e-mail system than it is to manage them well."
Facts and figures
There's no doubt the Internet blocking and filtering market is picking up steam, and experts say it's expected to continue as new software programs hit the shelves.
For now, though, the vast majority of employers are either undecided or currently weighing the pros and cons of Internet blocking.
In its newly released survey, the Society for Human Resources Management found that 70 percent of organizations do not randomly review employee e-mail.
It also reported that 77 percent of respondents surveyed said their organizations do not restrict access to specific sites on the Web. About 76 percent said they do not monitor employees' use of the Web either.
And nearly 65 percent of organizations said they have not received any employee complaints regarding inappropriate or offensive e-mails, while 22 percent said they have.
Most complaints involved jokes, pictures of "inappropriate" cartoons, chain letters, and threats and insults sent via e-mail.
It's just those sort of complaints that Boudreau, of John Hancock Funds, is looking to prevent.
"I've been very concerned because I've had a number of individuals who, through their own ignorance or stupidity, have put me and themselves in a very awkward position related to abuses of technology," he said, adding some were downloading pictures from pornography sites, some were searching want-ads, and others were simply whiling away their days in cyberspace.
"Hancock, like a lot of other organizations, has the ability to monitor and track what (employees) do online, but we need to have something that will eliminate the things we deem inappropriate," Boudreau said.
"Hancock doesn't want to be put in a position of having to terminate someone because they violated a policy, so (blocking) saves people jobs and it save the company heartache in terms of not having to fire good workers," he said. "Not only that, but every time you fire someone you face a potential law suit."
For all of those reasons, Boudreau said inappropriate Web site surfing by employees under his direction will soon be coming to a screeching halt.
"They can type in anything they want, but if it's in those categories they are not going to get in," he said. "Not on my machine." 
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