Accidental porn is a workplace hazard
By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune
You're a savvy computer user, wise to spammers who flood your e-mail in-box with unsolicited, often fraudulent come-ons -- and hitting the "delete" button has become automatic.
Then you spy a message with a subject line that is both seemingly innocent and demands attention: "RE: your inquiry," "account activation," or a plaintive "Where are you?"
With a click of the mouse, up pops a hard-core pornographic image -- and an invitation to a Web site specializing in smut, or perhaps to a XXX-rated video conference with the well-endowed vixen you hasten to cover from the curious eyes of office cubicle passers-by.
More than 75 percent of office workers have accidentally accessed pornography while at work, and 15 percent have been so victimized more than 10 times, according to a Web-usage survey released Wednesday by Cerberian Inc.
Cerberian, one of many companies offering Internet and e-mail Web filtering applications, also found that half of the 2,400 people responding to its April survey admitted spending more than 10 percent of their time at work surfing the Internet for personal reasons.
Matt Mosman, Cerberian chief executive, said its survey also found that 63 percent of employees are alarmed by the unintentional ease with which porn can find its way onto their computer screens.
In addition to bogus e-mails, which account for 23 percent of accidental porn access, office workers also found that misrepresented Web links (52 percent) or deliberately misspelled versions of legitimate Internet addresses (48 percent) led them astray. Pop-up ads or windows are involved in 55 percent of porn contacts.
According to a study by MessageLabs Inc., a New York-based security company, spam rates in April rose to an all-time high: 82 percent of e-mails received in the United States that month were unsolicited bulk messages.
None of those revelations surprise Pete Ashdown, president of Salt Lake City Internet service provider Xmission.
While Xmission operates a proxy filter to its customers that can block employees' access to the majority of porn sites, Ashdown admitted "nothing is 100 percent."
Still, he added, available network-filtering technology can help office administrators stop almost all accidental viewings of porn, especially when used along with Internet browsers equipped with pop-up killing applications, he added.
Vigilance, and regular upgrades of filtering programs is a key. "The battle between spammers [and] pop-ups and ISP [Internet service providers] is always point and counterpoint," Ashdown warned.
Added Mike Biesle of ArosNet, another Salt Lake City ISP: "It's an area of constant warfare, as new technologies are developed to identify and block spam, and later circumvented or nullified by spammers."
The Utah Legislature and federal government have tried statutory remedies to spam and pop-up advertising.
Utah's Spyware Control Act -- aimed at applications, inadvertently downloaded onto PCs, that report back details of a person's Web surfing habits -- is currently being challenged in court on constitutional grounds by WhenU.com, a leading pop-up advertising firm.
The Federal Trade Commission recently implemented a rule calling for all pornographic spam to carry a warning label reading "Sexually Explicit." Violators, the FTC says, can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and imprisoned.
The catch, though, is the overseas origins of many unsolicited pitches -- especially pornographic ones -- that makes enforcement problematic, if not impossible.
bmims@sltrib.com
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