More employers blocking Facebook: Should you?
September 4, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: HR Tech, In this week's e-newsletter - Tech, Latest News & Views
More employers are tightening the reins on what Web pages employees are allowed to view. The most common victims of Web filters these days are social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.
A new survey by ScanSafe, a SaaS Web security provider, found a 20% increase in the number of its customers blocking social networking sites in the last six months.
Currently, 76% of those customers are choosing to block social networking. It’s now a more popular category to block than past favorites like online shopping (52%), weapons (75%), alcohol (64%), sports (51%) and Web mail (58%).
Less than half (47%) of ScanSafe customers block banking sites.
“When Web filtering first became an option for companies we generally saw them block access to typical categories such as pornography, illegal activities and hate and discrimination,” comments Spencer Parker, director of product management at ScanSafe.
“In recent months, employers are obviously wising up to the dangers and negative impact on productivity linked to certain sites and more and more of our customers have chosen to block social networking.”
Also, the company attributed the threat of malware to the increase in blocking.
Does your company block access to those sites? Why or why not? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Tags: blocking, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, social networking
September 8th, 2009 at 2:26 am
With the increasing number of data leaks situations, companies should closely monitor their employees computer activity.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
yes, we block our computers from getting to those sites. We kept getting viruses on our computers from our employees who visited these sites!
September 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Given all of the studies regarding employee productivity and general disdain for blocked sites, we do not block access to social networking sites, youtube, google video, etc. We do however block access to most IM apps, proxy sites, P2P, file delivery sites, and streaming music services. And maintain a very good IDS and AV setup throughout our networks.
September 9th, 2009 at 7:49 am
I like ulm’s approach to this problem. We are advocating the use of Twitter and Facebook as positive marketing tools for our company and our clients. It is a wonderful marketing tool if used properly and you can’t beat the price.
September 9th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Same here Stu. My organization advocates use of these sites as well – so much so that we have an organization FB page for all three of our host companies. Because the nature of our business is sales and creativity, these social networking sites are almost a new revenue stream. We are able to reach students, professors and the like. I like Ulm’s approach as well. To date we seem to do pretty well with limiting what can be downloaded, as only a select group of employees have access to download anything on their computers.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:35 am
The supervisor/manager mindset is if it doesn’t interfere with productivity then there is no cause for alarm. We have had an employee or 2 who were on these type of sites for most of the day and not getting their work done and hence they were blocked from using the site until they got the idea to keep up on work. Also, in terms of blocking harmless websites from the users, they will only find something else to do to kill the time. With sites such as facebook and myspace, at least they are still at their computer and available to get their work done if something is called for. As far as the virus issue is concerned, the people who have gotten viruses on their computers were browsing/searching and went to less established/known websites. Looking at the log on your virus scan should show you where the virus originated from.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
The list of websites that our parent company has blocked is HUGE. I’m the editor of our member newsletter, and I can’t even get on sites to locate a Wine or Seasonal Cocktail of the Month!
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:37 am
Related to access of Facebook, social networking sites, I have reservations about our recruiters using these sites as a supplement to finding contact information. I’m concerned that the information gathered may legally place us in jeopardy because these sites contain information, available to most, that is personal such as religious affiliation, memberships to particular organizations, etc.
This has led to a “block”/request to our recruiters not to utilize these sites.