We are right to fear internet crime. But we can protect ourselves

Batten down the firewalls, release the anti-spyware hounds, and up the spam alert to red status: 21 per cent of us are now more worried about online crime than about being burgled. According to a survey for the UK's Get Safe Online campaign, fear of being duped by hackers is enough to put some of us off going online altogether.

And we're right to be concerned. In the week the survey was released, coinciding with the national internet safety roadshow, Microsoft issued a record number of security patches for its software, and the online virtual world Second Life was attacked by a code storm of self-replicating grey goo. In 2005, losses due to phishing scams - bogus websites that con you into giving away your login details - amounted to more than £23m in the UK alone.

The Get Safe Online website is a well-presented, comprehensive guide to protecting your computer and yourself. The Get Safe director, Tony Neate, advises consumers to treat their PC like their car - following the website's advice to keep it well maintained with the latest updates, and secure from real and virtual-world thieves.

Unless you are a closet gun fetishist, your car is the most dangerous thing you own. Neate's automotive simile thus bears a little stretching. Online, we cruise the information superhighway in souped-up machines that we barely understand. With a startling minority of us setting off with no anti-virus software or firewall - the equivalent of letting the kids drive themselves to school - we are a danger to ourselves and others.

Whence this brazen disregard for basic safety? Well, apparently, just under half of us believe it is the responsibility of corporations to keep us safe online. Perhaps we have been lulled into this puzzling consumer infantilism by those irritating messages that frequently appear on our screens: "Are you sure you want to open that attachment?" asks Nanny if we so much as click the mouse. "Do you really want to download that .exe file?" Such niceties are the preventative equivalent of that brand of horsebox that announces itself in a tone of aristocratic condescension each time it is put into reverse.

In his paper The Generative Internet, Professor Jonathan Zittrain warns that the innate vulnerability of the internet could lead to "unduly closed endpoints". In this imagined future, corporations take more responsibility for online safety by shipping machines and software that are less dangerous in the hands of ill-informed users, but also far less flexible.

Think of it as travelling the information highway in a train instead of a car. The direct line to Crewe might be safe, but those tucked-away beauty spots in the Welsh hills will be inaccessible. A visit to www.getsafeonline.org is not just a computer MOT, it's a driving test for internet users. And if we value our freedom to roam the web as we wish, it's one we should all take.

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