the use of computers becomes more built in to business operations employees naturally spend an increasing proportion of their time working at them. Working? Really? With temptations such as chat, streaming video, blogs, social networking and myriad other interesting sites (weather, maps, pornography, music, games, gambling, shopping, sports) it’s no wonder that surveys such as Websense’s annual Web@Work study reveal a depressing incidence of non-work related Web surfing by employees.

And its depressing not just because of the loss in productivity due to the amount of time wasted on such activities. These private activities, because they take place at the workplace using work computers, can entangle the business in legal prosecution cases related to their illegal use.