Opening the door to the internet fraudsters

At the same time, 96 per cent of you send sensitive documents via email, even though 68 per cent understand that this isn't secure.

Fifty-seven per cent of you send personal bank details via email, even though 77 per cent of you know email is not a safe method to transport such information, as (wait for it) it can leave you open to fraud.

And yet I repeat: 95 per cent of you think you'll be the victim of an internet fraud.

Presumably you all leave a sign on your front doors when you're not in saying: "No-one home, please burgle me."

These figures come from UPAQ, a company which (surprisingly enough) specialises in securing electronic data delivery. But these figures probably are fairly representative of the online population as a whole, despite the vague possibility the company behind them has a teeny-weeny vested interest.

This was also the week that another two paedophile rings which made extensive use of the web were busted by police. Over 50 people in all were arrested (see 'UK police swoop on 45 net paedophiles', http://www.silicon.com/43522, and 'Nine arrested in latest online child porn case', http://www.silicon.com/a43516 ).

Ever get the impression the once dazzling sheen of the internet is beginning to tarnish slightly?

The media tends to get a lot of the blame for this: we at silicon.com have certainly been accused of an unhealthy preoccupation with negative stories. That's debatable (but this isn't the place to argue whether the media dictates or reflects the interests and values of its audience).

What's true is that we, as individuals, are not doing much to help matters by acting like idiots when we go online or send email, as the above survey shows.

There's also a huge stigma attached to being the victim of any kind of net crime, which means a huge proportion of hacks and frauds go unreported.

That makes it very hard to combat the threat as no one has a real hold on what's going on, whether that be the nasty media or the security forces in all their various guises.

And quite frankly we think that's a disgrace, and a much bigger problem than the media's predilection for knocking copy. So we're going to try to do something about it over the coming weeks. Watch this space (and silicon.com itself).

We ran a story about the rise of the vertical portal, or vortal, earlier in the week (see 'The portal is dead, long live the vortal' http://www.silicon.com/a43449). That provoked a response from a reader who wanted us to know that a vortal is Afrikaans for "a small root vegetable resembling a carrot".

This is the source of much hilarity at meetings of South African business people, no doubt.

Less funny was the way in which Ericsson tried to soften the blow of the redundancies it announced this week.

To make all the staff facing the axe feel better, it posted a message on its intranet designed to show that Ericsson was not the worst when it comes to this sort of thing. The message listed how its rivals had also been hit recently (Motorola, 16,000 jobs to go; Lucent, 16,000; Nortel, 10,000; Nokia, two per cent of its workforce, etc). Then there was a sentence or two which said, in effect, "See: we're not that bad!"

Welcome to sensitive 21st century management techniques.

Why not just say: "You're sacked. Oh, and by the way, you don't stand a chance of getting a job anywhere else in this industry either. Thanks for everything..."

At least this means there'll be some highly talented people out there to plug the skills gap - if it really does exist. Everyone says it does (see http://www.silicon.com/skillssurvey2001 for our own stats on this). But with so many people being sacked at the moment, its days may be numbered. Although highly talented people come at a price, of course...

This week, the government announced a £50m, three-year scheme called Ambition IT, which aims to create up to 7,500 high-tech apprentice jobs for unemployed people who complete a training course. A whole string of IT companies have agreed to take on these people for a minimum of six months if the government pays for their training courses (see 'Skills crisis: 7,500 IT apprentices to plug skills gap' http://www.silicon.com/a43503 ).

Chancellor Gordon Brown said: "Ambition IT matches men and women without jobs to the businesses that need skilled IT technicians, a demand that itself is set to rise by up to 25 per cent in the next three years."

That speech may well have been written before the recent spate of job cuts, profit warnings and stock plunges.

Mind you, these people will be offered salaries of between £15,000 and £20,000.

So they could be used by the industry as a cheap, short-term solution to the skills crisis. Nice one.

That's it for now. You might like to know that silicon.com is interviewing the inventor of Linux Linus Torvalds soon, and you have the chance to put your questions to him. See http://www.silicon.com/a43527 for details.

The Round-Up will be employed again next Friday.