Facebooking at Work? You May Be Putting Your Company at Risk
  BY Zachary Wilson Tue Feb 2, 2010



You may be lucky enough to work in an office that doesn't 
restrict social
networking, but that doesn't mean your bosses trust you.  
According to a new
survey conducted by British research firm Sophos, 72% of firms 
believe their
employees' activities on social networking sites could endanger 
their business's
security.  Other data backs up that fear: The number of 
businesses that were
targets for spam increased from 33.4% in April 2009 to 57% in 
December, a
dramatic increase in such a short time period.


With Facebook reaching 350 million worldwide users and basically 
forcing users
to open up their profiles, the rise in spamming isn't a big 
surprise.  Facebook
was deemed the most potentially dangerous network, with 60% of 
businesses saying
they believe Facebook presents the biggest security risk, 
significantly ahead of
MySpace at 18% and Twitter at 17%.  LinkedIn was deemed the 
safest of the popul
social networks, with only 4% claiming it as a security risk.
  Seventy percent of the firms surveyed reported spam and malware 
attacks via
social networks during 2009.  And if your company has a blog (or 
if you're
Engadget), you may have noticed an increase in comment spam: 
According to spam
filtering service Akismet, a huge 83% of all blog comments are 
spam.
  [Via Sophos]
  Copyright Ággc) 2010 Mansueto Ventures LLC.  All rights
reserved.  Fast Company, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 
10007-2195


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