Ever had to fire someone for reading dirty Web sites or sending racy e-mails? If you said no, you might not be paying close enough attention.

In a recent article, Computerworld reported that a little more than 50% of companies surveyed have had to fire employees for misusing e-mail or the Web. Most of them said porn or other innapropriate content was the culprit. In other cases, the employee was simply wasting too much time.

Same goes for e-mail – in many cases, employees were fired for using offensive language, while others were sending too many personal messages. Sending confidential info to the wrong people also led to a lot of terminations.

One thing this means, of course, is that a lot of companies are watching how employees use their technology. It’s a good idea to have monitoring capability in place, even if you don’t actually have someone tracking single every e-mail and site visit. Many companies don’t start watching closely until they think they have a reason to.

It’s important to inform employees of your policy and let them know you’re monitoring what they do – that could save a lot of trouble and surprise down the road.

Do you keep track of employees’ Web use? Have you had to fire someone for violating the policy? Let us know in the comments section.