According to the latest Symantec MessageLabs Intelligence report, employers are now clamping down on employees using the internet for checking sports scores and gambling.
The report claims that over the past four months there has been an increase in the number of businesses intentionally blocking these websites.
“Either clients are choosing to block sports and gambling sites more as a company policy, or employees are visiting these sites more frequently so companies are starting to block them so that productivity isn’t affected. MessageLabs Intelligence suspect it’s a bit of both,” Symantec’s senior manager enterprise and partner services, Andrew Gordon said.
The number of sports category web pages blocked has increased to nearly 50,000 blocks from 18,000 blocks per day, with blocked gambling pages reaching 80,000 blocks per day.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
