Porn, The Web, and The Workplace
Probes conducted by the SEC’s inspector general discovered 31 SEC staffers downloading porn while “working”! One, an attorney, viewed 8 hours a day, and when his hard drive was full burned the images on DVDs which he stored at the office and home. He has resigned. One, an accountant, viewed over 16,000 images and found his way around all blocks created by the IT watchers. More time was spent looking at porn than the markets.
Elsewhere, a senior executive at the National Science Foundation viewed porn for 331 days. An executive at the Gettysburg National Park viewed porn for over 3400 hours in 2 years. A chief judge in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals launched a porn site while presiding over an obscenity trial.
The Nielson Company reports that more than 21 million Americans accessed adult websites on work computers in March of 2010. That’s 29% of working adults. Average time spent: 1 hr and 45 minutes. Average time per session was 12 minutes and 38 seconds. Adult sites ranked 5th in popularity after member communities, online games, e-mail and instant messaging; even more than classifieds/actions and current events/global news.