As Crucial as Coffee: Web Surfing at Work

A new study of Web surfing behaviors at work finds that on any given day, an employee might check out porn, fall for a phishing scam or drain bandwidth while streaming a music video on company time.

Nevertheless, 50 percent of office workers would rather give up their morning coffee than their Web surfing, finds Web@Work: General Trends in Internet Surfing, a survey released by Websense, a security vendor, on May 17.

Either accidentally or intentionally, 12 percent of workers surveyed had visited a pornography Web site while at work (versus 17 percent in 2005); though the overwhelming majority (95 percent) said the visit was accidental.

Yet, it wasn’t for lack of knowing the possible consequences. Almost half (46 percent) of employees surveyed reported that they believe they were at risk of losing their job if they visited adult content using their work-owned Internet connection.

Ironically, 92 percent of employees surveyed said that they believe that their company has the right to install Web filtering technology to manage which types of Web sites they visit.

Workers spend more time than ever using non work-related applications, with 24 percent of respondents admitting to watching or listening to streaming media at least once per week, up from 18 percent in 2005.

Read the full story on eWEEK.com: As Crucial as Coffee: Web Surfing at Work