Privacy settings bring concerns for employers

Following Microsoft and Google's respective launches of private browsing features in their browsers, some industry experts have begun calling the feature ‘porn mode' as it gives the users the ability to view adult sites without leaving evidence.

WebSpy COO Lagis Zavros claimed: “It should be emphasised that these new features are purely aimed at the home market. Most organisations will have web, proxy servers or firewalls all capabile of capturing and logging traffic as it flows through the company.

Individual users will not be able to bypass this and employers will still be able to monitor sites visited and general browsing activity. Dynamic changes in technology and work cultures make it imperative for employers to have acceptable usage policies and monitoring of employees."

The new features have been introduced over the public's concern over privacy rights and many people believe that private activity on the internet should remain private as long as it is legal and acceptable within that society.

However within the workplace employers have a duty of responsibility to protect their assets, minimise risk and maximise the return to their stakeholders whether they are private or public.

Zavros said: “A number of vendors have tools that place surveillance agents on individuals PCs and it is often very easy for technology savvy employees to bypass these.

"WebSpy has focused on providing monitoring and reporting by leveraging data from secure servers or from an ISP and hence has no concerns regarding the introduction of privacy features with IE8 or Google Chrome."

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