Blogs Not Safe for Work? Company bans 42 Million Pages

Wired News reports about a company which bans all sites containing the word “blog” in a juvenile attempt to prevent employees from accessing blogs.

A Google search shows about 42 million pages containing the word blog in url.

Companies worry that employees might leak sensitive material while posting comments to blog message boards. In a survey of over 300 large businesses conducted in conjunction with Forrester, Proofpoint found 57.2 percent of respondents were concerned with employees exposing sensitive material in blogs. That’s higher than the portion concerned with the risks of P2P networks.

The keyword here is concern. The reality is that blogs has as much chance of leaking as forums or email or plain-old sites like fc.

In any case checking for the word blog in url is bound to be highly ineffective and in all likelyhood have more false-positives than real sites.

Look at major blog sites like BoingBoing, Gizmodo, Slashdot, Techdirt, Engadget etc. Do you see the word blog in their url?