Last year, 31.8 percent of publicly traded companies in the United States investigated a suspected violation of privacy or data protection because of employee misuse of electronic media, according to Mathew Scott (“Worker e-mail and blog misuse seen as growing risk for companies,” on the Workforce Management Web site www.workforce.com).
 
In a report by Forrester Consult­ing and Proofpoint, 26 percent of companies surveyed say they saw their businesses affected because sensitive or embarrassing information had been leaked this way. Problems ran the gamut from losing trade secrets to slander and defamation lawsuits, Scott says. Companies estimated that 19 percent of outgoing e-mail contained content that posed legal, financial or regulatory risks. Almost 28 percent of companies said they had termi­nated an employee for misusing e-mail. Blogs and message boards were also indicated as being problem­atic.