Before you send out a newsletter to your entire organization, you should probably double-check that your attachment isn’t pornographic.
The Utah State Bar Association is currently “investigating” an incident where they sent out a photo of a topless woman to the entire email list. Matt Page, communications director, said that they are horrified and are investigating how this possibly could have happened.
Could it be that someone hacked them? Could it be a disgruntled employee?
Sure, but any HR person who has been around the block at least once knows the answer: whoever attached the photo had naughty pictures on his (just guessing the gender here) computer and accidentally attached one.
Look, we HR types aren’t telling you to keep your porn off the company computer because we’re mean. On the contrary. We want to stop you from embarrassing yourself, and your organization. We also want to prevent sexual harassment lawsuits. And we want you to focus on your actual work not, ahem, other things.
To keep reading, click here: Oops! Utah State Bar Association Sends Topless Photo to Every Lawyer in the State
It’s wrong, embarrassing and could lead to legal liability for invasion of privacy if the subject of the photo is identifiable and is not the actual sender. Furthermore, I’m a technological dinosaur and have never understood why so many people are storing intimate pictures on their devices that sometimes — intentionally or not — end up getting electronically transmitted. That being said, nudity — per se — does not equate with pornography. If it’s merely a topless photo, without suggesting any kind of sexual activity, it might be indecent, but it’s probably not pornographic.
That doesn’t make it work-appropriate!
Agreed
\well, true, but still not appropriate.
Agreed. I just wouldn’t want anyone to get written up for “porn” though, if it’s merely NSFW.
I think you missed another important reason not to look at/store porn (or other personal stuff) on a work compare: when they’re at work employees should be WORKING. When they’re using company resources, they should be using them FOR WORK.
I’m retired now, but at my company these shenanigans were firing offenses and that rule was abundantly clear to every employee.
Most people who aren’t HR folks would be gobsmacked at how many of their coworkers are watching porn at work. Guess what, guys (it’s almost always guys)? IT can see you!
Watch your naughty videos at home, please!
I once had a conversation with a site manager about “If you do it on my network, I have a log of it.”
Two weeks later, I (at the request of my boss) turned in 45 pages (in small print) of proxy logs (with duplicates deleted) on his porn surfing on his office computer. I only went back a week. (Most of the URLs were obviously porn. Some, not so much, and I was told to be thorough. So I got paid to surf porn sites for several hours.)
(But, in one of the most epically stupid things I’ve ever seen, in decades of IT work, he also liked to *print* *it* *out* and keep the prints in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. They called it “the porn drawer” for years afterwards.)
In a previous company a lot of guys viewed porn at their desks and made the office environment awkward for women. Then the IT people discovered that UNIX disk space was unexpectedly full because of the huge number of graphic files with obvious titles like “wettshirt.gif.” The head of IT demanded that the lead UNIX sys manager give him the names of the owners. The sys manager declined but said he’d “take care of it.” The next day, guys all over the office were whispering, “The pope?” “Yeah, the pope! Really!” The sys manager had linked all the file names to a picture of the pope with a reminder to go and sin no more. The perpetrators knew they’d almost lost their jobs and they apparently did repent, reducing the “bro” vibe very nicely.
Brilliant response!
In my former role as IT Manager, I had to deal with these situations on a regular basis and have dealt with everything from granny pr0n to animal pr0n to…umm you name it. The only type I thankfully never need to address was the kind where I would immediately call in the FBI. I made HR know that I would still go through our normal process but the FBI would also be brought in immediately in parallel. I call this the anti-Joe-Paterno approach where people notified higher-ups who hid the evidence and did nothing.
One of the Deans at the Harvard Divinity School had to resign after large quantities of porn were found on his work computer. I doubt that many people get surprised by stupid stuff like this.
The new (male) doctors at my job were viewing too much porn on work computers. The solution, all nurses (90% female) had to undergo sexual harassment training. NOT the male doctors viewing porn, just the vastly majority female workforce of nurses who were not viewing porn. Yeah.
What about when your job has a bring your own device policy? If your employer provides you with a computer, then “use for work only” or “no porn” is a reasonable restriction. If they’re making you use your own, personal, bought with your own money laptop (and smart phone), then it’s reasonable for you to use your own property for personal web browsing and other uses (including porn) outside of work hours in your own home.