[Zsd-news] ZSD News, July 2003: "Private use of Business Internet"

[I. Forbes]

Hi All

This month I want to have a look at the subject of private use of 
business internet.

Internet and e-mail facilities are an essential resource for most 
modern office environments. These facilities are used for business 
related e-mails, internet banking etc. In addition to this staff 
members may wish to use the facilities for private e-mails and non-
business related browsing. It is a  very reasonable thing for 
management to permit modest private usage of these resources.

However there is often an attitude amongst staff, and sometimes 
individuals in management too, that internet charges are an 
overhead that has been paid for by the business and that the 
facilities should be used to the fullest extent, both for business and 
private usage.

This can lead to problems. Sooner rather than later, the facilities get 
overloaded and the "quality of service" suffers. E-mail gets delayed 
and on-line transactions slow down dramatically.  Eventually an 
important e-mail gets delayed unacceptably or an essential task like 
paying wages gets disrupted. At this stage the management become 
alerted to a problem.

We have been asked to investigate problems in this kind of scenario 
on many occasions. We have found many "interesting" causes 
ranging from individuals downloading pornography through the 
sending of "joke" e-mails to the internet being used to play a local 
radio station in the office.


PRIVACY AND OFFICE RESOURCES

Is an employer entitled to monitor and/or intercept an employees e-
mail? Well I am not a lawyer so I am not really qualified to answer, 
but there are a few principals:

- Firstly if the employer has paid for the resource, he is entitled to 
make regulations concerning how those resources are to be used - 
both for private and company traffic.

- Secondly, if these regulations amount to the fact that private e-mail 
and internet usage is subject to monitoring, then the employees 
have a right to be informed of this situation.

Ideally there should be a company policy in place which is 
communicated to all parties.


THE COST OF SENDING E-MAIL

Everybody knows it costs R1.65 to post a standard sized letter but 
e-mail is free -  or is it? 

There are the overheads costs of computers, networks, modems 
etc. There are also monthly charges from the ISP as well as 
telecommunication costs payable to Telkom. These charges are 
payable by both the sender and the recipient. Sometimes dial-up 
telephone call charges are payable, during office hours these can 
amount to over R2 per mB of data downloaded.

We have done some investigation into the cost of sending and 
receiving e-mail. A lot depends on the type of connection, the time 
of day that users are on line and the way that fixed costs of leased 
lines etc are accounted for. The answer seems to fall between R1 
and R2.50 per mByte for the recipient and the same again for the 
sender. (Obviously there are exceptions on both ends of the scale). 
Clearly these charges can add up.


TYPICAL INTERNET OFFICE ABUSE

E-mail Abuse:

>From the above you can see that the cost of forwarding a clever 
animated joke e-mail to everybody in your address book can easily 
amount to many hundreds of rands. The bulk of this being payable 
by your friends who have their own personal dial-up accounts. 
Forwarding multiple copies of large e-mails can put a tremendous 
load on resources and it should be strongly discouraged. Being on 
the receiving end of these e-mails if often not much better. It is fair 
to ask staff members to discourage their correspondents from 
sending these messages and to ask for their names to be removed 
from the circulation address lists.

Another favourite is the sending of digital photographs. It is so 
tempting after the wedding, christening or other occasion to send a 
'roll' of 36 digital pic's to each of your favourite relations. Rather 
keep it down to say two photo's and 5 recipients (or 5 photo's and 2 
recipients). Even that will put more load on the system than the boss 
would care to know about...

Music and other non-work related Downloads:

While there may be some justification for sending out photo's, 
downloading music and games etc is definitely a step higher on the 
resource abuse scale. Notwithstanding the possibility of copyright 
infringements, these also cause major loads on resources. 
Particularly when dial-up links are involved, as these activities will 
mean that the link has to remain connected for many hours with an 
obvious cost to the business.

Pornography

I don't think any business would be happy for their resources to be 
used for viewing pornography. If computers are in an open plan 
office environment, this tends to regulate itself. Abuse tends to 
occur in private offices and after hours. Individuals can get addicted 
to viewing pornography. In some cases the offenders require 
counselling.


CONCLUSION

We as an ISP, our business customers and their staff all have a 
single objective. That is that e-mail and internet facilities should 
enable that business to work more efficiently and effectively. It 
should not be a net loss to the business and it should never "break 
down" and disrupt the business activities. Most business systems 
can easily handle some private traffic, but all parties must 
understand that resources are finite. Ideally there should be 
regulations in place which outlines what is and is not acceptable.

Finally if you want to listen to a radio station while you are working, 
rather bring a portable radio into the office than tune in via the 
internet - you will save your employer a fortune!
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Ian Forbes ZSD
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 21 683-1388  Fax: +27 21 674-1106
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
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