“Last month 227 British government workers were punished or fired for downloading a total 2 million pages of porn during an eight-month period. Such inappropriate Internet use, though surprising, isn’t uncommon if a new, international survey is accurate.

A third of some 350 employees at randomly selected U.S., U.K. and Australian companies said they download porn at the office, according to a study conducted by a researcher at Queen’s University in Belfast, Ireland. A similar number admitted they still send sexually explicit e-mails to colleagues or someone outside the workplace. Results are based on anonymous online surveys conducted from May 17 to Aug. 23.

“The most interesting thing that we see is that a small number of employees can actually put the whole company at risk, and that it’s still happening even after having filtering technology for the past 10 years,” said Susan Getgood, senior vice president of marketing at SurfControl, a Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Web filtering company that commissioned the study.

“Even more astounding are the kind of sites they’re going to,” she continued. “Pornography tends to have the most spyware, malicious code and all kinds of malicious things that can jump into your computer without your knowledge.” “