Tech Column

words by > Lee Gimpel

Maybe you didn’t always pay attention in school. Maybe you read comics in the back of the room and disguised your inattention by hiding behind a textbook. Here it is, so many years later, and you’re doing the same thing—but now you’re playing fantasy football or filling out job applications on company time.

You might have fooled your teachers, but they didn’t have the tools your boss has today. Responses from 2005’s Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey found that 76% of employers monitor workers’ website connections, and more than a quarter fired employees for misusing the internet. Here are some facts and fictions regarding what employers can and can’t see when you’re on the computer:

“Rather than use my work email address, I use an online service like Hotmail. My employer can’t read that.”

Fiction. It’s true that many computer surveillance programs work on the server level and thus only see what sites you visit, remaining blind to what you’re reading or writing. However, Ron Parsons, vice president of business development at Awareness Technologies, says that some surveillance programs have an invisible component installed on individual computers which gives them more reach. They can record every keystroke and even take screenshots every few seconds, thereby providing a visual history of your activities, including instant messaging or creating content on MySpace. “You really have the full coverage,” says Parsons of products like his WebWatcher.

“I’ve got a laptop that I use away from the office. My boss doesn’t know what I’m doing when I’m not at work.”

Fact and Fiction. If it’s company property, your employer may have installed monitoring software. The code can record what you’re doing on the road and “phone home” when you connect to the internet, even if you’re not using your corporate network. Employers can, however, limit when they track your movements to certain hours of the day. But just because you’re using your own machine at home, keep in mind that it is still possible for your employer to examine the email that passes through the corporate account.

“I either quickly open a ‘work’ window when someone walks by or use a program that makes it look like I’m working on a big complicated spreadsheet. No one can see what I’m doing, and I would know if my company was monitoring my web activity.”

Fiction. Doug Fowler, president of SpectorSoft, says that he tells customers that they should at least inform employees that they may use monitoring software. But even if there’s no clause in the employee handbook, Fowler says that common sense should dictate how one uses a computer at work. “Assume, number one, that your employer has some form of monitoring software installed, whether they’ve told you or not. Number two: don’t do anything or write anything in an email or chat that you wouldn’t want to show up in the local newspaper.”