Comments on: Internet Monitoring: How, what, why?

By: Alan Pierce

Alan Pierce — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:46:43 +0000

That’s incredible, and quite a gold mine for market research. I wonder what the original security researcher’s objective was in doing that sort of thing. Makes you wonder if he / she was simply finding Facebook security exploits or trying to collate data on his / her own. I also wonder if that issue’s being addressed by Facebook IT right now.

Would you happen to know if the file is still active, and where you can get a hold of it?

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:57:57 +0000

@Gene

Although monitoring of employees is completely legal, you have to take into consideration the kind of work environment you are promoting with such a system in place. I’m not knocking on a company’s right to monitor employees, of course. However, it may not be conducive to a small outfit of a company; or in an organization that specializes in creative work. As much as it’s legal, the total withholding of privacy may not always be the best solution when it comes to increasing productivity.

By: Emmanuel Carabott

Emmanuel Carabott — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:11:45 +0000

@Gene

Yes you’re right, a company has a right to monitor its employees and its infrastructure which they are using. In most cases this has been deemed legal as well by courts. Generally I believe the law states that it is legal to monitor infrastructure where the employee has no expectation of privacy. That’s why monitoring email is deemed legal so long as the employee has been informed that this is being monitored.

@Sue

That’s certainly one possibility. It could also be a curious employee as well; however, I dont know what the security researcher did but I guess he only identified who the IP address belongs to and not who was downloading the data.

@John

Thanks John, that’s in fact an important point that should have been mentioned in my article. Sometimes monitoring can be a requirement for a company as well. Some compliances mandate monitoring as part of their process.

By: John Mello

John Mello — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:50:21 +0000

Emmanuel—

As distasteful as monitoring the behavior of employees on the Internet is, it has almost become a necessity because so many disputes have to be settled in the courts. Whenever lawyers get involved in anything, you can be assured that the most cautious course of action will be prescribed. In the case of worker Internet activity, the course recommended to businesses is to cover their cheeks by creating the appearance of proactivity with employee monitoring programs. Those programs give a company plausible deniability when a lawsuit pops up over Internet related behavior that somehow failed to be detected by Big Brother.

—John

By: Sue Walsh

Sue Walsh — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:57:52 +0000

A security researcher recently discovered an easy way to scrape the data from over 100 million Facebook profiles that were left open to the public. He then uploaded it to BitTorrent and another user discovered a way to find out who was downloading it, and it’s been over 100 companies so far! The list is real who’s who-Goldman Sachs, The Hague, Wells Fargo, the UN…it goes on and on. I wonder if they are going to search the data looking for any of their employees so they can see what they’ve been up to?

By: Gene

Gene — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:26:27 +0000

It’s interesting how activity monitoring has been considered an invasion of privacy and illegal in some places. Before the internet and computers, wasn’t this the job of the supervisor or the manager? I think every company who is paying the employee has the right to know what their employees are doing on their property, on the hours they pay for.