“There's nothing you can do,” said Richard Laermer, CEO of the public relations firm RLM. “Liability is the thing that keeps me up at night, because we are liable for things people do on your premises. It's serious. I'll see somebody doing it, and I'll peek over their shoulder, and they'll say, ‘I don't know how that happened.’ It's like 10-year-olds. And it's always on company time.”
The concern for employers involves legal liability if an employee views sexually explicit or other offensive content unintentionally, and that employee pursues action against the company for not taking adequate steps to prevent such a situation arising — not to mention the loss of productivity when an employee is actively viewing unauthorized content instead of working.
A 2005 survey taken by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute reports that about 65 percent of American corporations use blocking softwares, which is up 40 percent from 2001 figures.
If wireless devices are the property of the company, then blocking software can be more easily installed to try and prevent a problem. But with many employees utilizing their own handhelds, laptops and videophones, the potential for viewing inappropriate material becomes greater.
But even as companies install blocking software on PCs and mobile devices whenever possible, in several cases employees are emailing explicit materials to other employees, exacerbating the problem — or the employees figure out how to get around the blocks.
In 2004, Elle magazine and MSNBC conducted an online survey of 15,000 people, and found that 15 percent of men and 8 percent of women had emailed sexually explicit material to a coworker.
In one lawsuit filed by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency alleged that a male employee at mortgage company First Mutual, located in Cherry Hill, N.J., was exposed to a sexually hostile work environment when a female employee emailed him sexually explicit photos of herself. The suit alleges that after the male employee complained to the company about the incident, he was fired in retaliation.
Officials from First Mutual said that the case had been settled.
According to another 2006 survey taken by Harris Interactive, 16 percent of men said they had viewed sexually explicit content at work, and about half as many women said they had. However, only 6 percent of those men and 5 percent of women said that they had done so intentionally.
“I always hid it. I always used laptops and I'd look at it behind closed doors,” author Michael Leahy said. Leahy, who worked in computer sales for companies like IBM and Unisys, said that he also is a recovering sex addict and he currently writes on the topic of Internet pornography.
“The biggest impact was the risk I brought to businesses in terms of sexual harassment or other claims and the lost productivity. Even with blockers and filters, I could view it,” Leahy said.
The 2005 survey taken by American Management Association said that one in four companies have fired an employee for misuse of the Internet.
“This dilemma is going to get much worse, given the capacity of handheld, electronic devices to download porn,” psychotherapist Carleton Kendrick said. “That will eliminate an employer's opportunity to check which workers have been going to porn sites on company computers.”