Apparently, we've had get-rich-quick schemes, extortion by people claiming to know where users live and to be watching them, and one targeted parents and claiming that their kids were being watched. All kinds of awful nonsense. "We usually put in the blocks, save the data to CD, call the FBI and send them copies of what we find," they told me. "It's like a fire drill for us now. We know what to do automatically."

"How often does something happen?" I wondered.

"Oh, probably 10 or so times a year...."

It seems it happens a lot more often than most people think. Most companies don't have an internal information security department to investigate and block this stuff, and many employees never say anything about it for fear of losing their job. One of my fed buddies told me that the government estimates that several million dollars are lost by employees every year to this sort of activity.

I arranged for a company meeting to let everyone know what was going on and what we were doing about it. At the end of the meeting, I asked why it was that almost 30 people knew and yet only one came forward to tell us.