Porn at work: 1 in 5 are guilty

Those who indulged in pornographic videos were warned that they risked infecting systems with viruses

While most settle for a quick coffee break or perhaps a quick stroll outside, it seems that around 1 in 5 people favour a slightly racier way to relax at work.

According to a survey of 2,000 people by telecoms company EliteTele, 21% of people watch pornography on their work mobiles.

The issue has arisen apparently as a result of the rise of BYOD (Bring your own device), where companies allow employees to log into work systems using their own smartphones.

But even deleting browsing history or setting the browser to incognito mode won’t prevent IT workers from seeing the sites that workers have accessed as they generally have access to comprehensive history of the Wi-Fi network.

Elite Tele warns that logging into pornographic sites can infect phones with viruses, which could in turn take down overarching work IT systems.

In the survey, 24% of men and 21% of women said that they would be too embarrassed to admit that the crash of their work systems was caused by their accessing of pornographic material.

The survey follows on the news last week that three senior judges were sacked for allegedly viewing porn at work using official judiciary computers. It was described by a reviewing panel as an “inexcusable misuse of their IT accounts.