Online footprints simple to track

By CHRIS BARTON

About a third of employers use high-tech computer software to monitor what internet sites their staff visit while at work.

Tracking staff footsteps on the web is easy, says internet content security company Marshall Software.

The company says about 30 per cent of companies and organisations in New Zealand use the software.

At the most basic level, monitoring relies on a log of the time, date and web address visited - all tied to a computer's unique ID.

The laborious part comes from having to analyse all that information and determine which of the sites visited are unacceptable.

More sophisticated monitoring will scan for specific words or groups of words on websites, log every keystroke you make on your keyboard, and even scan images sent by e-mail for flesh-tone colours.

The software that records and reports on all these activities is most often run by a company's information technology department following rules set down by its human resources department.

In some cases the software can be used to block access to certain web addresses.

Internet research company Netratings' survey for January shows the top porn site had 32,000 unique visitors, making it the 68th most visited site that month. Two other porn sites were not far behind with 28,000 (81st) and 24,000 (94th) visitors respectively. But cricket.org had 32,500 visitors, - which shows Kiwi priorities.

Martin Oxley, director of Marshall Software, says New Zealand's estimated monitoring rate of 10 to 20 per cent is comparable with rates in the rest of the world.

He acknowledges it is an area with many variables and that the software does not always get it right.

Examples include the time an embarrassed IT manager keen on body-piercing found himself at the top of the list of those visiting porn sites. Another was how a competitor's software scanning e-mail for flesh-tone images blocked innocent Halloween messages with pictures of pumpkins.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister's office confirmed that all computers in the Beehive, including those of ministers, were subject to periodic monitoring - and that inappropriate use would be drawn to the attention of managers.

Chris Patterson, a barrister specialising in information technology and telecommunications, says the flip side of monitoring is the invasion of employee privacy.

To comply with the Privacy Act employers must tell their employees in some formal way - either as part of their employment contract or through a signed "Acceptable Use Policy" - that their internet use will be watched.

But he says only a small percentage of companies have such policies.