Hartford auditors will not suggest city leaders block city server access to the Ashley Madison adultery website or other dating sites.
It comes in the wake of a controversy that erupted a month ago, when hackers revealed the potential identities of millions of people with accounts on Ashley Madison.
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters learned five of those leaked accounts were linked to email addresses of Hartford city and public school employees.
Auditors decided that blocking city server access to Ashley Madison and sites such as eHarmony and Match.com did not make sense because many other sites that also could distract city employees, and there is no way to block them all.
In addition, First Amendment issues were raised about what city employees can do during their mandated break times, and using city email accounts to send personal emails, for example, is permitted as long as the activity is "brief and infrequent."
A city attorney also mentioned that it is possible police may need to access the Ashley Madison website as part of an investigation.
Hartford's internal audit department has identified five email addresses from the city and public school system used to sign up for Ashley Madison, mostly during 2011 and 2012.
The five include two email addresses from the Hartford Police Department, two from Hartford Public Schools and one linked to the Hartford Public Works Department.
Auditors said about 600 emails from Ashley Madison were sent to those email addresses.
It's not clear if anyone read the Ashley Madison messages or for how long. Auditors also have not asked the employees if they personally created the Ashley Madison accounts or if someone else may have used their email addresses.
