In an age when bar staff sue employers for the effects of passive smoking I'm waiting to see who'll jump on the bandwagon and make sexual harassment claims against their boss for insufficient protection against the latest virus that forced them to porn Web sites!
The Homepage worm, which began its offensive course in Australian on Wednesday spread to Europe and the United States with such speed that, amid cries for compensation, miffed office workers could already have legal proceedings in the pipeline for all we know.
The smutty worm - vbs_homepage.a virus - arrived as an email and invited unsuspecting victims to view a "really cool" Web page. However, things heated up when an offensive porn page unfurled as the recipient executed the attached file.
By 10am Wednesday it had slipped onto just one or two local company networks but it soon picked up speed and within a matter of hours had infected 50 Australian corporations and over 1000 computers.
14,000 computers were infected worldwide during the email menace's around-the-world trip.
That's a hell of a lot of sexual harassment claims and with all the hype and hoo-ha over employees' Internet usage and email rights, I wouldn't be surprised if staff took it upon themselves to rock the boat a bit.
But would anyone be shameless enough to take on the boss in this manner? And if so, would they have a leg to stand on?
According to Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunities sexual harassment Code of Practice: "An employer must take 'all reasonable steps' to prevent sexual harassment if they wish to avoid liability."
Well the Homepage virus came with a vbs attachment, an extension commonly used for viruses and one that companies should definitely be blocking and companies could have left themselves exposed to legal action if they haven't stepped up virus protection following the recent Anna Kournikova virus.
So, whilst initially more mischievous than destructive, it remains to be seen whether the Homepage virus creates more damage than intended.
