The BBC tells a story today of a computer that survived a huge number of porn sites before being infected:

A council investigation found that he viewed more than 750,000 pornographic websites in nine months.

His habit reached its peak last July when he surfed for porn more than 177,000 times during office hours.

That works out at almost 10,000 pages a day, or more than 20 each minute he was at his desk.

A council official, trying to explain why no-one had noticed, said that each employee’s desk was set apart from the others.

The man was discovered only when his computer became infected with a virus, prompting officials to look at his web-browser history.

Unauthorized use aside, that seems like a pretty good run. I would have expected the system to be infected with a virus within the first hundred pages, let alone tens of thousands.

On the other hand, maybe it was infected but it took the company that many months to detect it. That would be more likely, but let’s assume his computer was actually “hardened”. Ha, couldn’t resist.

Another part of the story worth noting is the “why didn’t someone see his screen”:

A council official, trying to explain why no-one had noticed, said that each employee’s desk was set apart from the others.

It might seem implausible in many parts of the world, but when I was in Japan pornography did not seem like highly restricted material. So maybe people noticed but did not think it alarming? This reminds me of the old debate in some American states where any kind of violence and many kinds of hate imagery were considered tame but a picture of a naked woman would set off alarm bells. Detection is only as good as your filters.

Edited to add (May 6, 2008): I just attended an exhibit of paintings from 1690-1850 at the Asian Art Museum called “Drama and Desire” that explained erotic and sexual art was a significant although regulated form of expression.