The Internet poses great opportunities for employees to communicate and research. It also poses great risks. Employees can spend inordinate amounts of time finding information that may or may not be useful for their businesses. When an employee is surfing on the Internet, it can be very difficult for a manager to determine upon whose behalf the effort is expended.
Most organizations have the capacity and ability to monitor employee use of the Internet.
However, having the ability to monitor which sites an employee is visiting on the Internet does not necessarily translate into actual monitoring. Having the ability to know what employees are doing when using the Internet does not translate into actually monitoring usage. However, they aren t absolutely sure, so they refrain from knowing what is going on. Some organizations view the Internet as different from the use of other types of corporate resources. Setting limits on this new activity is difficult.