Productivity is under siege in Hong Kong offices, in the wake of a survey that reveals employees spend a third of their time surfing for entertainment, crime and sex Web sites.
Hong Kong employees are spending a third of their time surfing entertainment, crime and sex Web sites for personal reasons at work, according to a small survey by IDC Asia Pacific conducted on behalf of computer security firm Symantec.
The survey involved 100 workers and interviews with some information technology decision-makers.
The respondents, who admitted to surfing for personal reasons at work, said 48 percent of their time was spent browsing sites such as Netvigator, Apple Daily, and Yahoo!
Another 25 percent of the time was spent on crime sites - anything against the law or against a country's policy. Thirteen percent of the time was spent on sites containing violent content and another 9 percent on sites related to sex or sex education.
Employees who surfed for personal reasons also spent time downloading information: 62 percent of the time it was software, 25 percent was written reports and files and 11 percent was music.
The email attachments people sent included reports or files 82 percent of the time, software 11 percent and music 1 percent.
The problems with personal surfing at work included increased demands on a system, increased threat of email viruses, and decreased employee productivity, the survey said.
Ironically, 63 percent of employees said it was important for businesses to filter Internet information.
Company executives generally don't believe that workers are using the Internet for their own use on work time.
"There's no monitoring system of how email goes out, how people use the system," said Daniel Cheng, Symantec's managing director of mainland China and Hong Kong operations.
All the companies tend to believe that using antivirus system and firewalls was enough to secure a system, Mr Cheng said.
Mr Chee agreed. "Content filtering is not understood by many companies in Hong Kong," he said.
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