(John E Dunn, TechWorld) Mobile workers trigger more security alerts when they leave the office than when they do at their desks, the latest Symantec MessageLabs Intelligence Report has suggested. According to the company, the explanation for this disparity is simple: mobile workers visit riskier websites when traveling than they do in the more locked-down office environment.

After analyzing users on the company's hosted email service, remote workers were 5.4 times more likely to trigger download alerts than their office equivalents, a pattern that followed for visits to shopping sites, search engines, and dating sites. Mobile workers also generated 1,807 blocks based on infringing policies compared to only 322 for office workers.

"In general, more policy blocks overall are triggered by workers when they are out of the office, indicating rather intuitively that users are more compliant with usage policies when in the office," said MessageLabs' analyst, Paul Wood.