General discussion
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Topic
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Ethical Questions
LockedI’m an IT stuff in a small company. We recently implemented a new firewall system that can log users’ web usage. For the past few days my boss has requested a printout of Internet activities from one of my colleagues who happens to be my friend (say Lisa). Apparently someone in the office has been reporting him that Lisa has been to such and such website during working hours. Although none of those sites were of offensive type but they certainly were not work-related. My boss is not very pleased about this issue but has not made any comment yet to Lisa or her manager. To my knowledge, other stuff are also using the web for personal reasons (even to greater extend) but Lisa’s the one who got ‘nailed’. Being an IT stuff, I know it’s my responsible to fulfill my duty – give my boss the log; on the other hand, I also don’t want Lisa to get into trouble for surfing the web for only 5 minutes a day. Unfortunately my boss does not have a written Internet policy that could determine the seriousness of her web usage.
Should I tell Lisa in private about this issue so that she could stop the activity? But what if she realizes that she is the only one who is being watched?
Please advise. Thank you.