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 popular 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]