This week Facebook recommended OpenDNS on its Security Page, the place Facebook users are encouraged to go to learn how to stay safe on Facebook and on the Internet. OpenDNS is recommended because it takes the guesswork out of identifying phishing scams for you. Even if you click a suspicious link sent to you in a message by your Facebook friend, or posted on your wall, we’ll still prevent you from being fooled by showing you a warning. That’s a lot of incentive to use OpenDNS.

Like other social networks, Facebook seems to be working hard to eliminate phishing on its site. The more popular a site becomes, the more phishers are inclined to use it for phishing and saying Facebook has been gaining in popularity as of late is an understatement.

While Facebook has been growing its global user base we’ve been growing ours, and a big part of the reason people choose OpenDNS is our anti-phishing service. PhishTank.com has identified and verified more than 300,000 individual phishing scams, all of which are blocked for our users.

We’re thrilled Facebook recommends our service.

Admittedly, I was late to the game.

When I finally created a Facebook account +/- one month ago, I was shocked to see all of the people from various phases of my life who’d beat me there. There were childhood friends, high school and college friends, colleagues from all of the different professional positions I’ve held, even family members. I was hooked right away. I know it’s not a competition, but my 86 Facebook friends definitely make me more invested in the site.

What’s more, my job as community manager of OpenDNS is to do just that - have a hand in everything that touches our awesome community. Imagine my surprise to find the group OpenDNS is the Stuff with forty-something members and a moderator whose name I didn’t recognize. (No doubt the coolest Facebook group. If you haven’t yet joined, you really should.) The fact that the group was born outside of our doing is great, but just because I didn’t build it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be a part of it. I scanned the members, got familiar, intro’d myself to the moderator. And these things take time.

This is all ironic, of course, since I work for a company that blocks Facebook for thousands of businesses, organizations and households around the world. We did a survey recently and found that Facebook was the No. 2 most blocked domain on OpenDNS-using networks. (I’ll give you three guesses what the No. 1 most blocked domain was.) Since I’ve been using Facebook I’ve seen that the site is not unsafe for adults like me. No, not at all. But it does make me unproductive. Someone in my position, with my enthusiasm for Facebook, could easily pass a few hours during the workday tending to their account.

When we launched Web content filtering we weren’t sure who, besides parents and network admins at schools and libraries, would use it. Not everyone wants to be a censor. But I think my Facebook fixation and my acknowledgement that [me + work + Facebook = work not done] is pretty representative. When you’re on the clock, sites like Facebook can be a serious distraction. What you do on your own time, off the clock, is up to you.