It's already a workplace maxim that employees should be careful of what they say in their emails from company computers. But few office workers know to apply caution to their use of instant-messaging services.

These immensely popular computer programs, which let users exchange short text messages with online friends in real time, are not a haven for private chatter. Companies and government agencies can monitor and log IM conversations conducted on company network computers. And though it seems that IM conversations disappear into a cyber vacuum when a conversation is finished, that isn't always the case.

What the better part of the British public doesn’t know is that 33% of all UK companies now allow Instant Messaging by their staff and of that 33%, only 3% said that it was being used as a formal communications tool. This does not include the use of Intranet.

Most companies are just beginning to wake up to the popularity of Instant Messaging in the workplace. While more than a third of employees use instant-messaging services at work, only 31% of organisations have policies in place that specifically restrict the use of IM. But the issue has caught the attention of leading industries. There have been numerous surveys conducted on the subject and in particular in the Unites States where the National Association of Securities Dealers now insist that member firms "supervise" the use of instant messaging in the same way as they do written and electronic communications and to retain electronic copies of instant messages for at least three years.

There are several ways users can save IM sessions. Google Inc.'s Google Talk instant-messaging service automatically saves chat sessions of users that have signed in with Googlemail email accounts.

Users of Google Talk can disable the setting or choose to go "off the record" during a particular session if they want to avoid having it saved. Other instant-messaging services, such as AOL's AIM, Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Messenger, and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live Messenger, don't store conversations on their servers automatically. But they do offer various tools for companies and individuals to log conversations. Users can save an IM session by using a built-in save feature or by copying it into another file.

As you would expect over time, the benefits of IM at work or the development of IM for business use are now well underway. AIM Pro is a new free version of AIM for businesses and individuals at work, and is set to archive conversations on a local hard drive for 14 days, although the feature can be extended and/or turned off.

A more robust fee-based version, WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition, can store all company IM conversations on servers hosted at WebEx and can block messages that contain certain keywords from being sent at all. Microsoft's Live Communications server allows companies' information technology departments to log and search employees' IM conversations, including those conducted on other easily available consumer instant messaging services like Yahoo and AOL.

The development and sale of Instant Messaging products is a new growth industry and according to analysts is set to top in excess of US$3b in revenue by 2009. So for all fans of IM, when you used to worry who was bending over your shoulder while you cryptically typed away, don’t look over your shoulder anymore…………..look right in front of you.