What are the UK trends in the corporate use of Social Networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace?

Microsoft recently surveyed nearly four hundred IT Professionals to find out their approaches to Social Networking. You can view the full results here.

I think the findings are interesting as the results suggest that social networking sites are more popular with IT Pros than end users by a factor of nearly two to one.

40% of IT Pros do not see any security concerns in using social networking sites and 46% of companies are not monitoring their use.

I AM concerned that 35% of respondants publish their address and date of birth on these sites.

16% of respondants stated they have downloaded an application without checking it's safe - I would love to know what steps they took to verify the "safety" of a suspect application...

The whole idea of "downloading" an application in Facebook is quite different to the "traditional approach" as code is not actually downloaded to the client machine - it's simply enabled on the Facebook website/backend. Rogue applications DO pose a threat to the privacy of both those who install them AND their friends. They DO NOT pose a threat of compromising the security of the client machine as code is not installed there.

I would like to see all organisations providing guidance to their employees regarding the threat to privacy that thoughtless use of social networking sites can lead to.  Only 17% of respondants state they have provided guidance to employees and fewer than 5% of the workforce actually say they have received advice.

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• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
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