e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

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Millions log on to work wide web

GAVIN STAMP

http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/uk.cfm?id=376332003
YOU check out the latest news on the BBC, do a bit of shopping, check your bank account and then download a couple of MP3s for the drive home.

Is this scenario made possible by the latest internet phone technology, or is it the result of a couple of hours spent in an internet cafe?

In fact, this is what millions of office workers are up to behind their computer monitors when they should be making money for their bosses.

New research on workers’ surfing habits has revealed that the most popular website is www.bbc.co.uk, which was visited last month by over 2.3 million people using work computers. Office-bound browsers account for more than a third of its total number of ‘hits’.

The dotcom book and music retailer Amazon was in second place, with 1.6 million office workers visiting it at least once last month, closely followed by the internet auction site EBay, which had 1.4 million users.

Meanwhile, the study also reveals that many office workers are putting their jobs on the line, and their bosses at risk of prosecution, by illegally downloading pirated music from the internet.

The figures, from Nielsen Net Ratings, which monitors internet usage, show that the website with the largest proportion of office-based surfers is streetmap.co.uk. Nearly 60% of people using the internet map service do so from work.

Friends Reunited, which counts first minister Jack McConnell among its users, also features in the 10 most popular sites among office workers, with one million users.

And nearly half of the sites listed in Nielsen’s top 10 are retailers. These range from high street names such as Tesco and Argos to the internet travel agent Lastminute.com. Although the workplace has traditionally been where people earn their wage, increasingly it is also where they spend it.

Free and fast internet connections are fuelling rising internet use among employees, many of whom rely on slower modems to hook up to the internet from home. According to a recent survey, 87% of office workers admitted to using the internet for personal use.

Tom Ewing, internet analyst with Nielsen, whose figures are based on a survey of the surfing habits of 7,000 workers, said people tend to visit the same sites at work as they do at home with a few notable exceptions.

He explained: "Obvious entertainment and adult sites tend not be used by people at work in the numbers that they do at home.

"Most people go to the BBC for the news but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a large sports element."

Ewing added: "At the moment for a lot of people, work is the only time that they get to go on the internet. If companies attempt to clamp down on employees internet usage and become more security conscious, that may tip the balance in favour of usage at home."

Although many companies have a relatively relaxed attitude to their employees using the internet occasionally during work hours, few have formal rules setting out how much time, if any, their workers can spend surfing the web.

Aaron Ross, chairman of the Work Life Balance Trust, is in favour of employees being given some leeway as far as work surfing is concerned. He argues that it can take the strain off other areas of their lives and help improve their productivity.

Ross said: "If people get their shopping online, it means they can focus on their home life better and come to work afresh. People are bringing their home life into the office. If you can contain that in an environment agreed by both employer and employee, the time that they are not focusing on that will be focused on work and more productive in most cases."

He added that companies should tell workers what constitutes an acceptable level of internet usage. Some popular sites can pose serious problems for employers.

One of these is Kazaa, an online music service whose users can download, copy and share recorded music for free.

The MP3 site’s software has been downloaded to 200 million computers worldwide. One in five of its British users, around 250,000, log on at work. However, as with its famous predecessor Napster, downloading music from the site is illegal.

Companies have been warned that they could be liable to prosecution if employees use their property to pirate music.

Last night Adrian Strain, communications director of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, which represents record labels, said: "Companies should be worried about this not only because of the legal issues but because of these services clog up bandwidth and affect the efficiency of their services.

"If the law is clear that making music available on the internet without the permission of the rights holder is illegal, it follows that there is a legal risk in allowing it to go on.

"Companies could be exposed to legal action."

Some firms have taken a hard line.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, Scotland’s largest company, has a zero tolerance approach to personal use of the internet at work. The company has a surveillance unit which monitors the surfing behaviour of its 70,000 staff in the UK.

Spokeswoman Linda Harper said: "The company policy is that the internet is for business use only and staff are discouraged from any personal use."