Who's Looking ... at your Internet surfing?

"I thought it to be too insensitive," said Schmidt, president and chief executive officer of the Bonita Springs company. "We wanted a name that said what we did."

Though the name may better reflect the company's services, some claim Internet monitoring itself is insensitive.

Employers want to keep a close eye on their workers because they're losing productivity to fantasy football, pornography, stock trading and shopping sites.

"Unless you have a monitoring device, there's no way of knowing what employees are really doing," said Schmidt, who spoke with the Naples Daily News from Las Vegas where his company was participating in a Comdex technology trade show. "They're only a keystroke away from making it look like they're doing something different."

But one worker rights organization says it's not the big issue employers perceive it to be and that monitoring builds an invasive picture of an employee's personal life.

"Employers have some reason to be concerned about employee misuse of the Internet," said Lewis Maltby, president of Princeton, N.J.,-based National Workrights Institute. "(But) it's not nearly as big of a problem as people who sell (Internet monitoring products) would like them to believe."

Reports on how much time employees spend on the Internet for personal use varies widely. A study by Websense Enterprise and The Center for Internet Studies reports that 57 percent of employees use the Internet for non-work-related activities for less than an hour a day. The Stellar Web site claims the amount of time the average employee spends on the Internet for personal use is three hours a day.

According to Stellar, a recent report by the Gartner Group placed non-work-related surfing costs to U.S. businesses at $54 billion.

Schmidt said monitoring goes beyond productivity issues and protects companies from identity theft as well as from being sued for its employees' gambling and stock trading habits.

Steve Mommaerts of Burst Technology, a Bonita Springs company that provides Internet monitoring and filtering solutions, said in the past two years the focus on Internet misuse at work has shifted from porn, gambling and chat rooms to security issues such as hacking, file sharing and spyware, which allows outside parties to track Internet use.

He said Web monitoring is a good management tool and helps to resolve the situation before it grows into a bigger problem.

"You don't want to get rid of an employee, but address (the issue) in a positive way," he said. "In most instances, that's all it takes and the situation is resolved."

Both Stellar Internet Monitoring and Burst Technology services can be installed during the time it takes for a lunch break.

For Internet monitoring, Burst charges less than $1,000 for a small business to $50,000 for a large company. Stellar declined to say how much its services cost. Each company has about 30 employees.

Michael Goldstein, who works for LAN Associates in Fort Lauderdale, is a broker for Stellar Internet Monitoring. LAN also uses the product in-house.

"I love it," said Goldstein, vice president of sales and marketing for LAN. "What we like about Stellar is there's no investment in hardware or software."

Information is directed to Stellar's servers, which allows the system to report back in real time. So, if an employee is viewing a site determined by their department manager to be off-limits, the manager will be notified and can address the situation immediately.

Stellar sends a daily report of all Web sites visited by employees, and breaks it down to the time visited and by employee and which department he or she works in. Schmidt said the businesses that use Stellar range from small doctor's offices to big office complexes.

Burst Technology can also scale its product for any size company. Burst provides a workday summary report, which has two parts -- Internet activity from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 5 p.m.

Stellar Internet Monitoring is a subsidiary of Stellar Venture Partners in Naples, which Schmidt also owns. There are 30 employees between the two companies. The Internet monitoring business is moving its offices from Bonita Springs to Naples next month, to Greentree Plaza at Airport-Pulling and Immokalee roads.

While Stellar monitors Internet use and instant messaging, it doesn't yet offer a watchdog service for e-mail.

"We've tested them all," Schmidt said, who hasn't seen a program he likes.

"If we find someone, we'd probably be interested in buying and merging that company," he added.

Schmidt said he is in discussion with a number of companies either for a merger or an acquisition of Stellar Venture Partners, of which Stellar Internet Monitoring is a subsidiary. International Travel CD's Inc., which trades on the over-the-counter stock bulletin board, recently signed a letter of intent to acquire Stellar Venture Partners, though Schmidt said he doesn't anticipate any definitive agreements.

Maltby, of the National Workrights Institute, said companies like Stellar and Burst allow employers to have access to employees' personal lives.

"People go to the Internet with their most sensitive personal problems," he said.

For example, people turn to the Web for help when they are having trouble in their marriage or if their child is doing drugs.

Maltby said employers can prevent abuse of the Internet without spying on private lives by creating an Internet access policy and then using blocking software that implements the policy.

Wendy Girardin, of Girardin Associates in Naples, only uses Internet monitoring software when her employees are working outside the office. Those employees are usually executive protection professionals -- that is, bodyguards -- who are protecting her clients.

"It's a policy when I have the safety of other people I'm responsible for ... to make sure they're doing their job," she said.

An executive protection professional will log activities at the site and write incident reports. A client's confidentiality is often crucial, so Girardin said she wants to be certain names or locations aren't disclosed by the bodyguard.

Girardin, whose firm does criminal and corporate investigations and litigation support, also recommends Internet monitoring software to her clients. She said one needs to consult with an attorney before implementing any systems to be sure the company won't infringe on privacy laws.

She also tells businesses that making an Internet monitoring system known can cut out personal use.

"Sometimes if you inform them that cuts the problem out right there," she said.