One in two Facebook users have obscene language on their wall

(shutterstock/Anthony Maragou/shutterstock.com)

According to Reppler, a social media company that helps users "clean up" their online social reputation, 47 percent of Facebook users have profanity on their Facebook wall - the majority of which has been posted by their friends.

"The prevalence of profanity on Facebook walls is an increasingly important issue as a user’s Facebook profile comes under closer scrutiny, particularly by employers as they screen job applicants," explained Reppler in a May 23 blog post on the subject.

While you might have a squeaky-clean record, never penning an obscenity, 56 percent of the rude comments or posts appearing on Facebook Walls were posted by friends.

Eighty percent of Facebook users who had a profanity displayed on their Facebook wall had at least one post or comment with profanity from a friend, suggesting that if you use swear words on your profile, your friends will too.

Derivatives of the "f-word" were the most commonly found profanity on the walls of the 30,000 Facebook users in the study. "Sh*t" was the second most used swearword on Facebook and "b*tch" was a distant third.

According to a 2009 study by CareerBuilder, 45 percent of employers use social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to screen potential employees.