The first rule about Fight Club is don't blog about Fight Club

Filed under: Internet, Security, News, Blogging, E-mail

The first rule about Fight Club is don't blog about Fight Club

by Brad Linder Jul 20th 2007

If a new study is to be believed, nearly 10 percent of companies have fired an employee for blogging or posting forum messages in violation of corporate policy.

The report (pdf) was conducted for Proofpoint, a company that sells email monitoring software, so it has a vested interest in showing executives that they can't trust their workers. So take these juicy findings with a grain of salt:

32.1% of companies surveyed employ staff to read or analyze outbound email.
16.9% of companies surveyed had at least one person on staff whose primary job was to monitor outbound email.
37% of companies surveyed perform regular audits of outbound email.
The companies surveyed estimate that 18.9% of outbound email includes content that poses a risk to the company (Keep in mind -- this is what the company's estimate. That's a far cry from saying that 1 in 5 outbound messages could actually bring the company down).

More than a quarter of the companies surveyed had fired an employee in the past year for violating email policies. And nearly half had disciplined employees for the same infraction. More than 20% had investigated exposure of confidential information via a blog or message board. And 14% have disciplined companies for violating social networking policies, with 5% saying they've fired a worker for that violation.

In other words, either companies really do have a lot to worry about, or they overreact to employees' meek efforts to connect in some way with the world outside their cubicles. We'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Tags: corporate america, CorporateAmerica, privacy, proofpoint

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Todd said 2:44PM on 7-20-2007

Anyone stupid enough to blog disparagingly about the company they work for WHILE AT WORK deserves to get fired. In fact that may qualify for a Darwin award. People please, blog from home, or with your phone, or the freaking library!

And for you corporate trolls out there, who monitor email, how exactly are you "monitoring" someone blogging on an HTC phone ( with QWERTY keyboard )?

Rob said 4:49PM on 7-20-2007

@ Todd
Darwin award? Really?... Why doesn't anyone realize what the Darwin awards are? IT'S ABOUT KILLING ONESELF VIA A STUPID ACTION! - Thus it requires the nominee to die.

Not only that, but where does it say that people are getting caught blogging while at work? Chances are the offenders are blogging on their own personal time and violating company policy in one way or another even though they aren't "on-the-clock". Either way, the blogging/message board offenses are pretty small

Phatman said 5:03PM on 7-20-2007

Not only killing yourself, doing pretty much anything stupid that removes you from the gene pool (i.e. keeps you from having kids) could qualify you for a Darwin award.

Phatman said 5:08PM on 7-20-2007

Not only killing yourself, doing pretty much anything stupid that removes you from the gene pool (i.e. keeps you from having kids) could qualify you for a Darwin award.

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