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Survey: Forget work, IM is for flirting, gossip
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 Posted: 1:26 PM EDT (1726 GMT)


LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Flirting with colleagues, scheming against the boss and gossiping about co-workers are among the most common instant messaging, or IM, missives circulating around the office, according to a survey released this week.

So-called "IMing" -- the act of sending quick message exchanges to other Internet users -- has become a popular workplace pastime.

Just as they did with e-mail a few years ago, corporations have now embraced IM technology as it enables co-workers in large organizations to converse quickly and cheaply. But IM's popularity has its drawbacks, experts say.

Monitoring possible
Because many users believe it cannot be monitored by the boss, many freely fire off messages ranging from cruel cracks about a colleague's hair to sensitive information about major corporate projects.

"Businesses don't really monitor IMing," said Nigel Hawthorn, European marketing director for Blue Coat Systems, a Web security firm that conducted the survey of over 300 firms in the U.S. and Britain, the world's two largest IM markets.

The preponderance of personal chatter leaves companies open to sensitive corporate leaks and even lawsuits, Hawthorn said.

In the UK, 65 percent of the 204 respondents said they use IM for personal purposes during work hours, the survey said.

Half the UK respondents admitted to peppering their IMs with abusive language; 40 percent used IM to conspire on colleagues during conference calls and nearly one-third confessed to "making sexual advances" in the easily disguised dialogue box.

U.S. users more tame
U.S. respondents, meanwhile, gave more tame accounts of their IM usage. For example, less than one in five American survey participants said they used IM to comment on senior management or to flirt.

One explanation for the disparity is the Big Brother notion. Nearly 60 percent of British respondents did not believe or were unsure whether their IM conversations could be monitored by their employer while 71 percent of US respondents believed -- correctly -- that IM messages could be traced.