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.