Surfing for Porn and Getting Paid
A company that specializes in blocking X-rated and other unwanted sites hires people like Gene Toye to find them.
By Thomas Wailgum
June 21, 2007 — CIO — How many people can claim to have a job that allows them to surf porn, sports and millions of other websites that are not allowed anywhere near PCs in corporate America and K-12 schools?
Gene Toye can. An analyst for St. Bernard Software, a maker of messaging security products, Toye evaluates and categorizes websites. “My friends think it’s a crazy job,” he says. “Everyone thinks all I do is look for porn all day. They call me ‘Porn Guy.’” During the past five years this college student has worked part-time at St. Bernard, classifying sites into 73 general categories —such as real estate, society, malware, lingerie or phishing. An in-house software application guides Toye and 15 other part-time analysts, providing them five sites at a time to assess. ...
