# Have you actually known or heard of anyone getting in trouble for a website they visited at work? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 15, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284 "2013-01-15T14:27:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/41 "2013-01-16T01:35:18Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The likely scenario is not that the IT department calls up your boss and tells him that you’ve been visiting clown porn sites all day. > > What usually happens is that you’re visiting your clown porn sites, and your boss or coworker looks over your shoulder and gets annoyed. And then your boss asks the IT department for your browsing history. This. I work IT in a medical facility and with xx thousand employees, direct monitoring of email and surfing just isn’t feasable. We have a decent filtering utility running at the gateway so innapropriate [bigoltitties.com](http://bigoltitties.com) really never comes up. Mostly it’s about how much personal surfing is going on. Prior to filtering, yeah, we’d lose two or three morons a year to porn busts. What caused admin to say enough is enough and install the filter was when we lost 5 out of 7 graveyard shift people out of one of the more critical departments in one day. email is another matter entirely though. As I mentioned earlier, medical facility. HIPAA and several dozen alphabet soup departments have everyone in our industry under a microscope. We run an app that does keyword and heuristic scanning on all outgoing mail and anything that looks remotely confidential gets redirected to an encrypted storage site and the recipient recieves a notice with an HTTPS link to come pick it up. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/42 "2013-01-16T01:46:23Z")
I find it kind of creepy that a company would tell employees what websites they can’t visit etc. I mean, you’re either doing your job, or your not. That’s the only question they should be concerned with. When I worked in a hotel, one of the guys who worked the night ran his internet porn business while he was at work. Since at night there wasn’t a whole lot else to do anyway, it wasn’t a problem. He was annoying and gross, and was eventually fired for other stuff, but that wasn’t a problem. ---
**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/43 "2013-01-16T01:58:11Z")
Where I work, they sent out an email a while ago about appropriate use of company computers etc., and mentioned a guy who had made thousands of posts to some internet forum (a sports related one I believe) on company time and lost his job…I also know of a guy there who was fired for looking at porn, I think he might have gotten off with a warning if he had admitted it but pissed one of the bosses off by steadfastly denying it (dishonestly, AFAIK). ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/44 "2013-01-16T02:17:33Z")
a few jobs ago, a guy in the office got a stern warning after he was caught running one of the old file-sharing programs (Kazaa?) on his PC. When you start taking up so much bandwidth (of which we didn’t have much) that the rest of the office complains about slow network speeds, IT _will_ come and find you. > [@gracer](#): > > I find it kind of creepy that a company would tell employees what websites they can’t visit etc. I mean, you’re either doing your job, or your not. That’s the only question they should be concerned with. in the case of pr0n sites, someone viewing them at work could lead to a HR nightmare. Being seen by another employee can lead to a sexual harassment or hostile work environment lawsuit. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/45 "2013-01-16T02:26:09Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > in the case of pr0n sites, someone viewing them at work could lead to a HR nightmare. Being seen by another employee can lead to a sexual harassment or hostile work environment lawsuit. I s’pose. Meh. Silly hysterics. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/46 "2013-01-16T02:49:49Z")
Yep. Co-worker, fired for watching porn. He was also warned for spending too much time on investment sites, but it was the porn that spilled the applecart. ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/47 "2013-01-16T03:02:42Z")
Just out of interest,am I the only person who worked at a place where not only was it acceptable, but it was basically expected to be looking at (and showing others) hardcore porn and similar during off-hours? That was how a porn a like of me was discovered. I think I’ve mentioned before my porn a like so I won’t bother linking it. (Anyone interested can google “oh no there’s a negro in my wife” and try to find the correct, er “episode”) ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/48 "2013-01-16T03:06:09Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Yep. Co-worker, fired for watching porn. He was also warned for spending too much time on investment sites, but it was the porn that spilled the applecart. I work with a guy who was fired for watching porn. We worked for an internet investment site. So almost the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Obeseus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbce88/32.png) [@Obeseus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obeseus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/49 "2013-01-16T03:06:43Z")
I used to work with two guys who ran a baseball fantasy league. This was before the days when you could cheaply get statistical updates emailed to you each day. These guys were using online sites and USA Today to punch in the stats at work. Not sure if IT ever was involved, but they got caught when the boss walked by while they were printing out the stat reports. They tried being sneakier, but were caught again and canned. ---
**Author:** ![mage-girl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@mage-girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mage-girl)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/50 "2013-01-16T03:29:28Z")
I had a friend who was fired (or “asked to quit”) for blogging at work. On her blog, she was griping about her job. Not sure who found out, or how, but someone certainly did. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/51 "2013-01-16T03:38:48Z")
You know what I have occasionally? Dreams where I’m looking at porn at work and someone stops by my cubicle and I can’t seem to minimize the window, or cancel the pop-ups, or shut down the computer or otherwise save face. It is a dream I have a few times a year and it is embarrassingly frustrating. Back when Al Gore first invented the internet, and before filtering, and home access I did indeed look at some porn at work. I mean, it was almost impossible not to be curious in the very early days. So, now I’m punished a few times a year by these embarrassing dreams. Nowadays I can’t even access Facebook or Youtube or any “uncategorized” sites. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/52 "2013-01-16T03:42:04Z")
I do work in financial services industry. One of the guys in my dept sent a ‘suspicious’ email to an outside email address early last year. This was flagged & sent to our boss to investigate why an email was sent that has PII (Personally Identifiable Information - a SSN) in it. He didn’t get in any trouble after he explained he forwarded _his own_ W2 to _his_ personal email so he’d have it at home to be able to use it for tax preparation. > [@zombywoof](#): > > …I also know of a guy there who was fired for looking at porn, I think he might have gotten off with a warning… I think he was getting off looking at porn. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/53 "2013-01-16T04:00:18Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > Just out of interest,am I the only person who worked at a place where not only was it acceptable, but it was basically expected to be looking at (and showing others) hardcore porn and similar during off-hours? I wish. My brother used to work at a radio station where that happened. They were looking at porn and found a woman who looked like my brothers wife (who worked there at the time). They all thought it was funny and sent it around. The rest of us are afraid to check facebook or look at news updates and wikipedia too often. Must be nice. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/54 "2013-01-16T04:19:44Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > (Anyone interested can google “oh no there’s a negro in my wife” and try to find the correct, er “episode”) But not at work, though!! ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/55 "2013-01-16T04:30:21Z")
I suspect if it wasn’t for sexual equality laws then porn would be fine in most work places. It helped where I was working only had balls-y women and I bet where your brother was working, given it was a radio sation, also had balls-y women too. Actually that’s another debate in a way, why does sexual equality mean people have to change standards to wussy ones. But not one I want to get into tbh. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/56 "2013-01-16T04:45:15Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > That was how a porn a like of me was discovered. I think I’ve mentioned before my porn a like so I won’t bother linking it. (Anyone interested can google “oh no there’s a negro in my wife” and try to find the correct, er “episode”) A porn a like of you? Come again? ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/57 "2013-01-16T04:47:34Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > I suspect if it wasn’t for sexual equality laws then porn would be fine in most work places. It helped where I was working only had balls-y women and I bet where your brother was working, given it was a radio sation, also had balls-y women too. > > Actually that’s another debate in a way, why does sexual equality mean people have to change standards to wussy ones. But not one I want to get into tbh. You know what dude? You can be really incoherent at times, and this is one of them. What are you even trying to suggest here? Watching porn at work would be completely fine with employers, excepts chicks now demand equal rights at work? Maybe I’m missing something, but you really are an incomprehensible conundrum. ---
**Author:** ![Gleena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b3f665/32.png) [@Gleena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gleena)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/58 "2013-01-16T04:48:22Z")
> **[Interest in assets: Macquarie worker caught ogling pictures of Miranda Kerr...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/interest-in-assets-macquarie-worker-caught-ogling-pictures-of-miranda-kerr-live-on-tv-20100203-nbsi.html)** > > The unfortunate Macquarie Bank worker captured on live television ogling half-naked photographs of Australian model Miranda Kerr has made headlines around the world. I know (vaguely) this guy. Macquarie Bank is an investment bank, there was live feed from the investment room on the nightly news. He’s looking at mostly but not quite nudie pics of Miranda Kerr. Turns out it was a joke, he knew the news guy was there. He was going to be fired but the public outcry meant that MacBank decided not to. ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/59 "2013-01-16T05:04:09Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > A porn a like of you? Come again? It’s not me, to be perfectly clear if it wasn’t already. But yeah, there’s a dude who looks very much like me in a film called “oh no there’s a negro in my wife X” where X is a number I can’t remember. I just did a quick google and [here](http://www.free-vidz.com/thumb/youjizz/img_1164248_60bff703b3e86352c56db7c54a76bae2.jpg) (NSFW) is a screenshot. By the way in the film I don’t have sex, I just masturbate while feeling sad. Just saying… > [@Leaffan](#): > > You know what dude? You can be really incoherent at times, and this is one of them. What are you even trying to suggest here? Watching porn at work would be completely fine with employers, excepts chicks now demand equal rights at work? Maybe I’m missing something, but you really are an incomprehensible conundrum. Of course wasting time at work watching porn would never be fine, but I see no reason why watching porn at work when there was nothing else to do would be a problem if it didn’t make women feel uncomfortable. Therefore if we were in a time where men were totally in charge then it would probably be entirely fine to watch porn at work. Similarly you could introduce women who could “handle” that kind of thing without being upset and it’s still absolutely fine. Please don’t think from this that I am advocating that it is better for men to be allowed to watch porn at work than it is for women to be allowed equal rights, that is not at all my position. The debate I didn’t want to go into is why equal rights for women had to mean feminine standards - but seriously, I don’t want to go into that, because it’s a ludicrously minor issue and nothing good can come of it. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2013, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284/60 "2013-01-16T05:04:28Z")
> [@Simple\_Linctus](#): > > Just out of interest,am I the only person who worked at a place where not only was it acceptable, but it was basically expected to be looking at (and showing others) hardcore porn and similar during off-hours? Well there have been several occasions where it actually was part of my job to watch hardcore porn! Not on the computer, but old school 16mm vintage porn. I also had a former co-worker who did not have a computer at home, so he’d stay after hours at the office to watch porn. Which we only found out about because he liked to print photos using the office printer and he accidentally left some in there that another co-worker found the following morning. :eek: (He didn’t really even get into trouble either. Was just basically told don’t do it again and stop wasting the printer ink.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-actually-known-or-heard-of-anyone-getting-in-trouble-for-a-website-they-visited-at-work/647284.md?page=4)