The Matrix: It’s not Paranoia

…when they really are out to get you.

keeping tabs on every Web site they visit, every keystroke they tap, every instant message they send–even the contents of the messages on their personal Hotmail or Gmail accounts.

Besides financial fraud, companies find less insidious but still costly forms of abuse such as employees spending long, production-sapping stretches on Facebook or YouTube.

To help avoid cases of worker fraud, companies are increasingly using monitoring and tracking software. “Employee fraud definitely increases in economic hard times,” says Frank McKenna, co-founder and chief fraud strategist of BasePoint Analytics, a firm that offers fraud consulting and software for banks, mortgage lenders, and credit-card companies.

Consider yourself warned.

4 thoughts on “The Matrix: It’s not Paranoia

  1. To give them credit, most companies that are even moderately serious about this will warn you on hiring that they don’t want you farting around on the Internet with their computers outside of fairly limited use. Wells, for example. When I worked there, they prohibited streaming audio, downloads, use of webmail applications, eBay and, of course, viewing NSFW materials. Most of it’s pretty sensible from a liability and intranet security point of view.

  2. Is it just me, or is this perhaps a reasonable response to those people who seem to forget what it is they are being paid to do?

    Shouldn’t good conservatives be on the side of business? Is this really all that radical a concept?

    I mean, seriously – some people really have a problem with being clear about the difference between work time and their free time. Privacy is for what you do on your own damn time with your own stuff, in a location where you have a reasonable expectation of that privacy.

    Their office, their computers, their time, their employees – they’re paying for it, seems fair to me they track what is done.

    You want to do some of this stuff on your lunch hour and you can’t wait until you get home, bring your notebook computer and use your own equipment on your own time.

    How hooked on immediate gratification and self-indulgence have we become for heaven sake.

  3. Shouldn’t good conservatives be on the side of business? Is this really all that radical a concept?

    Their office, their computers, their time, their employees – they’re paying for it, seems fair to me they track what is done.

    No, dog, a good conservative should be on the side of capitalism.

    …could not agree more with all of the above…business and capitalism fall under the same heading as far as I am concerned.

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