Spending a few hours at lunch trawling job sites or catching up with friends on Facebook? You might be interested to learn what your boss can see about you with WebSpy.
This week the Government kicked up a privacy storm with proposed changes to Internet monitoring laws, but the reality is your boss can already see much, much more.
A quick look at major monitoring tools show that email monitoring is just the tip of the iceberg. The bad news? if your boss really wants to know what you're doing online, they can track everything, right down to that YouTube video you saw a few minutes ago.
We took a look at WebSpy, the well-known email and Web monitoring software, to see exactly what's traceable. Webspy Live is pitched as the "ultimate tool for real-time, Internet and email monitoring". The goal? To deal with "unproductive" and "excessive" browsing.
Here's a list of what's possible:
What sites you've visited: WebSpy Aalyzer will generate a report showing all the sites visited by workers. It's possible to search this list to see if anyone's visited a particular site (YouTube, for example), then filter to show which YouTube links resulted in big amounts of incoming data. Finally, the list can then be sorted by user, showing who visited the YouTube link and when.
Types of sites you're visiting: Companies can also track your Web browsing by category. For example, who's been visiting the most sports sites, or job sites, or Webmail. WebSpy Live can also send an email alert to the IT manager with your name on it, if you visit a specific type of site - eg. Ebay.
Biggest downloaders: WebSpy Analyzer can track the "most active" users, according to how many "hits" you're making online. It also shows how many megabytes you've downloaded.
How long you're spending online: WebSpy Live can be configured to set "triggers" if you spend more than a certain amount of time browsing the Web.
What type of files you're downloading: WebSpy Live can be triggered to alert IT staff if you're downloading sound files, streaming media, video clips, or making file transfers.
Youtube: If necessary, WebSpy Live can track a certain user - eg. Tom - triggering an alert if they enter a specific keywords, in this case "youtube".
Is it legal? The general answer is yes, if you've been warned about it first. According to privacy advocate Dale Clapperton, of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFA), who told us "so long as they know it is going on then it is legal in terms of Commonwealth laws dealing with interception."
Officials are reportedly proposing to allow certain companies to engage in email monitoring without consent of employees, which has sparked a new debate about how far companies should be allowed to go with Internet surveillance.
Privacy groups are critical of current laws, with the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) calling it "completely inappropriate" for corporations to have "unfettered" access to emails.
Dale Clapperton also pointed out the "vast difference between enabling auto spam and virus filtering, and giving them cart blanche to browse through employees emails at will."
As for those YouTube videos? "We would support employees being able to make reasonable personal use of company internet facilities," said Clapperton.