Internet loggers have been used by companies for many years now. The purpose of internet loggers is to monitor all incoming and outgoing internet traffic. The reason a lot of companies love to use internet loggers is that it will let them keep track of their employee’s internet usage. Internet loggers are a valuable tool used to ensure overall company productivity doesn’t suffer as a result of employees using work time to surf the internet for purposes other than relating to business. Usually the systems administrator will be in charge of monitoring internet loggers and will report suspicious internet activity to upper management. A lot of people in the workforce have complained that the use of internet loggers is an invasion of privacy and feel that companies shouldn’t have the right to spy on their employees in such a way. On the other side of the argument, companies say that they are just trying to protect themselves from employee that abuse their internet privileges and can cause the company to lose money as a result of employees not using their time productively.
Bottom-line, internet loggers really should be used in a corporate environment as a way to monitor an employee’s productivity. The truth of the matter is that when you are at work you should be working and not wasting time and money surfing the internet for personal reasons. Yet, companies should employee measures other than internet loggers, by allowing employees to surf the internet at reasonable times, such as lunch breaks. This would be a perfectly reasonable compromise as long as the policy states that there are curtain site that employees can’t visit at all. Even if they are allowed to surf the net during a lunch break, systems administrators should still use internet loggers to detect if employees are traveling to sites not permitted by company policy.
We are also seeing internet loggers being used at the home. This is a good idea for parents that allow their under children to go online, but still want to make sure that they aren’t travelling to sites that they shouldn’t be. In this setting internet loggers are a great way for parents to keep their kids safe from the dangers that can be lurking in cyberspace.
