Facebook adds Email

If you've been watching the news this week, it was unavoidable. You inevitably saw the announcement from Facebook that they are rolling out email services to their user base, making them the largest email provider in the world. Facebook has long been a thorn in the side of security administrators who manage secure web gateways and proxies. Most companies didn't want their employees visiting social networking sites and spending all their times on them. Times have changed, and even the US military has changed its stance on Facebook, realizing it's an important tool in keeping the troops happy. So like companies that realize Facebook is an important marketing tool, the U.S. military has to find the right balance between allowing access and making sure employees don't get carried away playing games or using other Facebook applications all day.

Having email in Facebook, just adds one more distraction, and provides one additional page to block if your organization's policy already prohibits external access to e-mail. The good news for most security and IT administrators is that modern URL filters and web protection already offer mechanisms to allow basic Facebook access, but prevent access to specific pages and applications through the use of multiple categories. Allowing the category of "social networking", but blocking "games", "alcohol", "pornography", and even "webmail" will block things like Farmville, drinking games, Playboy's Facebook page, and eventually Facebook's email application, since these are generally categorized as both social networking and the appropriate other category they fall into.