There always have been dangers lurking on the Internet. But things are getting worse, according to this article on the San Francisco Chronicle's web site:

Criminal attacks against major Web sites have grown so common that Internet users have no reliable way to know which sites are safe to visit, no matter how well known those destinations are, security experts say.

News of the latest attack comes from Finjan, an Israeli security firm, which is reporting today that last month it found a large cache of information - including confidential medical records, financial records and business e-mails - sitting unprotected on a computer network server in Malaysia.

The data came from more than 40 major financial companies around the world, including the United States, and was stolen from computers belonging to doctors and home users conducting online banking and, in some cases, from machines inside corporate networks that the hackers managed to penetrate and infect.

The Chronicle reports that attacks have been increasing for more than a year, with the main goal being to "steal and sell personal information to conduct identity theft and sometimes extortion."

It seems the cyber-criminals are taking advantage of numerous weak points: Inherent flaws in all kinds of software (instant messaging, media players and JavaScript, among others), configuration mistakes by web sites, and even vulnerabilities built into the web itself. That last one is tough to fix. I mean, what are we going to do, start over? Not bloody likely.

You have to wonder if things will get to a point where millions of regular Internet users unplug because it's just not worth the trouble and risk. We're probably a long way from that now, but if the Internet eventually becomes the equivalent of New York City in the '80s (or Baghdad today), I don't think that scenario is inconceivable.