More employers blocking Facebook: Should you?

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.