A Year Ago: 72 per cent of US business Web users go to porn sites

Your boss may know exactly what kind of Web sites you visited today.

And if your company is a lot like others, your boss also found out that the hottest Web surfing was found at pornographic Internet sites.

At least, that is ON Technology Corp.'s take on how most people spend their time surfing around the Internet during business hours. The Cambridge, Mass., maker of tracking and blocking software for the Internet found that 72 percent of the 100 users it surveyed said they made at least one stop at an online smut site.

"I find that to be a surprising number," said Phil Neray, the company's director of product marketing.

Perhaps even more surprising - or perhaps not - was the high frequency of computer users employed by universities who admitted visiting cyber-smut sites. Still, ON Technology's research jibed with other surveys conducted by market researchers indicating that some of the smuttiest sites on the Web also happen to be the most popular.

Neray, who cautioned companies to articulate policies for Web surfing, encouraged employers to download the free trial version of the On Guard program to determine just what kind of Web sites are used by employees. In this case, of course, self interest dovetailed with the supposed greater good in that ON Technology makes several products for monitoring Net usage and blocking whole categories of Web sites. The company also employs a team that peruses the Net, looking for and categorizing sites that could include questionable material.

On Guard can be installed surreptitiously on a server, instead of every desktop. The company also makes another product that can be installed at the firewall and blocks categories of thousands of sites.