Ford issues two-week porn amnesty

The Ford Motor Company has given its UK employees two-weeks to delete any offensive material from their PCs.

Workers at the company were yesterday sent an email outlining the amnesty scheme, which Ford said is part of a continuing campaign to crack down on staff using company systems to access pornographic websites, send offensive messages and generally misuse company email.

Staff have until 15 March to remove such material from their computers and can ask Ford's IT helpdesk for assistance without fear of recrimination.

After that date, spot checks will be made and disciplinary proceedings will be taken against any employees found with inappropriate content on their machines, a company spokeswoman said.

"We have a zero tolerance on this, but the feedback we had from our staff was that they wanted to know how to delete this type of material," she said. "People may have accidentally stored this type of material on their PC and not know how to remove it."

Ford suspended three staff from its plant in Dagenham, Essex last year for computer misuse. The company said at the time that internet pornography was not behind the move.

Jonathan Armstrong, ecommerce specialist at law firm Eversheds, said: "I think this is a good policy.

"It is very difficult to discipline employees on 'one-off' cases as they will say they hit the sites by accident. This type of approach allows them to clean the slate and start again."