148 Griffiths Copyright Idea Group Inc. Copyright Idea Group Inc. Copyright Idea Group Inc. Copyright Idea Group Inc. Chapter VIII Internet Gambling in the Workplace Mark Griffiths Nottingham Trent University, UK According to a recent report carried out by the company SurfControl (Snoddy, 2000), office workers who while away one hour a day at work on various nonwork activities (e.g., trading shares, booking holidays, shopping online, etc.) could be costing businesses as much as $35 million a year. Their survey found that 59% of office Internet use was not work-related and that those who traded in shares, played sport, shopped, and bought holidays cost companies the most. One activity that may play an ever-increasing part of Internet use at work is Internet gambling. Most gamblers are what might be termed normal or social gamblers who occasionally bet on a horse race, play bingo or buy a lottery ticket. However, for a small proportion of the population, gambling is an activity that takes over their whole life and can cause major problems. A new area of potential concern is Internet gambling--particularly in the workplace. Many people believe the future lies in the Internet, and the gaming industrylike most other companies with a service to sellis itself starting to go online. Technology is the future and electronic gambling is where the action is and will continue to be. No one is really sure how the Internet will develop over the next 5 to 10 years but Internet gambling as a commercial activity has the potential for large financial rewards for the operators. Gambling is undergoing mass expansion all over the world. The global growth of gambling is particularly noteworthy in the area of Internet gam- bling. In many countries there appears to be a slow shift from gambling being taken out of gambling environments and into the home and the workplace This chapter appears in the book, Managing Web Usage in the Workplace: A Social, Ethical and Legal Perspective by Murugan Anandarajan and Claire Simmers. Copyright ' 2002, Idea Group Publishing. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey PA 17033-1117, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB7047 IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING