Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Ruth Suehle" <wuzzled AT nc.rr.com>]

My office had a talk on phishing today, and this article got posted in the
break room. The numbers sound a lot higher than I would have thought in
terms of people who are cutting back their participation in e-commerce
activities.
Ruth


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/23/ecommerce_decline/

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Published Thursday 23rd June 2005 18:17 GMT

So much for the "digital revolution". The Gartner Group is revising its
e-commerce predictions downwards after 42 per cent of users said they were
cutting back net use because of security concerns. As a result, Gartner is
shaving one to three per cent off its growth estimates. It had previously
reckoned that online business would grow by 15 per cent next year.

A third of concerned users are buying less online than they otherwise would.
More than a quarter surveyed said they were cutting back on online banking.
Of those registering concern about online banking security, four per cent
have abandoned online banking completely, while 14 per cent have stopped
paying bills online.

More than half of the sample has received a phishing email, and malware and
reports of wholesale identity theft are also factors.

"Consumers' fears about online fraud have increased as more have received
phishing emails, their computers are fouled with thieving viruses and hacker
programs and companies reveal mass thefts of credit-card numbers from
databases," reports the Wall Street Journal.

Personal information on 40m credit card users in the US went astray - the
latest in a succession of ID breaches - and a Sun reporter described how he
could pick up online banking passwords and credit card information for £4.25
($7) a name from an Indian call center.

Gartner analyst Avivah Litan calls it a watershed year, and she's not
exaggerating.

The problem is a lot easier to describe than it is to fix. Browser and OS
security are only part of the problem: many scams rely on the very
flexibility permitted by the internet's protocols to spoof websites and
email addresses. Nor would "closed" networks entirely solve the problem,
either.

However, the consensus is gradually shifting away from the utopians and
fantasists to discussing practical alternatives to the IPv4 wreckage we are
stuck with today. Last year a report recommended TCP should be replaced
within five to ten years, and Intel SVP Pat Gelsinger has advocated a
"superstructure" to be built on today's protocols.

All of which suggests that Web 3.0 will look a lot more like France's
Minitel than anyone can have envisaged. But it isn't 1994 anymore.