An insurer's nightmare: A high profile prospective business partner is ready to sign a multi-million-dollar deal. As you finalize the arrangements during a tour of the home office, your visitor sees an employee viewing pictures from a, shall we say, inappropriate-during-business-hours Web site. A mere glimpse is more than enough to dissuade the would-be partner from signing the paperwork, and he walks out-along with a lot of potential revenues.

There are paths to enlightenment and roads to ruin on the Net. It's easy to blame the people who put the content out there-but assuming it's legal stuff, it enjoys First Amendment protection. As is the case with freedom of speech issues, it's the viewer's right-and responsibility-to view or bypass any material that might be objectionable. And while office policy doesn't ordinarily trump the Constitution, management may establish any guidelines they wish regarding use of company equipment-in this situation, that means the desktop PC, the software on it (e.g., the Web browser), the Net connection, and so on.

Let's say your company's policy forbids viewing sites of adult nature. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances that could explain why 'graphic' sites load: a misleading hyperlink pointed there, a Web page auto-routes users, or someone simply uses the right (or wrong) search term. For example, researching the King Midget-an automobile popular during World War II-could yield a link to "The King Midget in Action." Your fault? Hardly, assuming you didn't sit there gawking at the images for 10 minutes after they were loaded. (Dick's Sporting Goods is a popular store in the Midwest. A trip to dicks.com will not, however, bring you to the store's site.)