Volvo IT Department Gets Banned From Wikipedia For Racist Rants

Written by Alex Williams / November 25, 2009 4:07 PM / 5 Comments

One of the risks facing any enterprise is how to deal with people who use the corporate network to post rude, sexist or even racist material on public facing web sites.

That issue is coming home to roost for Volvo, following the news that Wikipedia has banned editing from machines inside the Volvo IT Department for racist remarks left on the pages of two well-known Pakistani Cricket players.

According to the Channel Register, someone in the Volvo IT Department wrote a number of racist remarks in articles about two Pakistani cricket players: Wasim Akram and Inzamam-ul-Haq. The IP Address, 192.138.116.230, maps back to the Volvo IT Department.

The rants were not directed at the players but other contributors to the site. Less than 20 minutes after the rants were left on the site, Wikipedia banned the Volvo IP address until early December.

Volvo made a statement that they are investigating the incident.

According to Channel Register, Volvo stated:

"We have a policy describing acceptable and prohibited use of Internet services and the measures to be taken if these services are misused."

How to deal with the way people conduct themselves using the web and real-time applications will become an increasingly challenging issue for the enterprise. How this pans out will come down to the policies companies establish.

The truth is, we are in the early days of microblogging and even writing to the web. Corporate policies are few and far between. But you know this issue is going to be on the minds of managers everywhere as as incidents like the one at Volvo repeat themselves in any number of ways.

Comments

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This is not the first time Volvo IT gets entangled in net slander or worse. I remember noting them in log files already back in the nineties. I do however not remember the exact nature of the problems back then.
Also please note that Volvo IT has very little to do with Volvo the carmaker these days even if they are of the same origin.

Posted by: Gunnar L | November 25, 2009 4:52 PM

That's bad, that's very bad. Well the IT department may have very little to do with the carmaker, but the average folk don't care about that, Volvo = ah the carmaker. Peoples can't really conduct themselves.

Posted by: Charly | November 26, 2009 7:29 AM

That is just very sad to hear I hope the World can move on from all the racist stuff and start to think of each other as equals and not some color.

Kind Regards
Micah Burkette

Posted by: Micah | November 26, 2009 10:57 AM

"Corporate policies are few and far between."

Pretty much every single larger company in US has decent policies for dealing with this. Our company (as probably every larger company out there) prohibits using internet for any non-work related activities as well as policy for harassment free work environment.

I hope VOLVO HR will not try to resolve this too quickly. I really hope the guy is not going to loose his job.

Posted by: jimmy | November 29, 2009 6:06 PM

I think that it is good that they banned Volvo
as the racism should not exist in the business.
I know everyone this the same as i think, it is a
leading car maker but they should be in their limits.

Posted by: ITIL Version 3 | November 30, 2009 2:14 AM