Sixty second hypothetical.

[rivka]

Your boss lets her nine-year-old son hang out in your office sometimes, when she's working in the evening or on weekends. When he's here, he uses your computer. (And never puts the mouse back on the left side, but that's beside the point.)

You have Internet Explorer set up to clear the history file every day, but IE also keeps track of URLs which have been directly typed in - you can access them from the address bar. One of the ways you can tell that your boss's son has been using your computer is that sites like cartoonnetwork.com and nickelodeon.com appear in the address bar menu. Okay. But one morning, nakedladys.com is right in there with the addresses for cartoon websites. You click on the link to make sure it's not an ironically-named site for kids. It's not.

You have no idea whether your institution monitors Internet usage for porn viewing, although it's pretty obvious that no one is checking to see how much time you spend on non-work-related sites in general.

Do you tell your boss? And if so, what do you tell her?

Comments

[windsea.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a parent of an almost 12 year old and a 9 year old -- I'd like to be told! I'd appreciate a straightforward but polite approach -- "I thought you might like to know that Johnny seems to have been poking around a bit on the Net -- at least, after he was last using my computer a site called nakedladys.com popped up in my address bar! It's probably no big deal, but I wanted to let you know."

I think it's entirely natural, and the 2004 equivalent of Kimmie and I checking out her father's Playboys when I used to sleep over when we were in 4th grade. But it's good to know if your kids are mucking about on porn sites, so you can decide how you want to deal with it in your family context.

(When I found that C and K had been checking out sex.com, I sat down with them and we looked at some more, er, appropriate sites together, and they're now in a drop down menu on the toolbar. Since I did that with them, they seem to have lost interest in the porn (and trust me, I know how to tell). I suspect the fact that I didn't freak out made it less attractive as forbidden fruit ...)