Fraud, hassles may put Net in not-worth-it mode

CHICAGO — Anyone wishing to contact Theresa Lipa can send her a letter or make a phone call. Forget e-mail.

Since her computer began spewing pornography in November, the machine sits unplugged in her Des Plaines, Ill., home.

“It was terrible,” said Lipa, a 69-year-old grandmother. She tried everything she could think of to make it stop, “but it just kept coming. So I finally just unplugged it.”

Then she got a $75 bill for “entertainment” from the pornographer.

Like millions of casual computer users, Lipa has learned that the Internet has become a dangerous place. Worms, viruses, spyware, spam and an unending string of fraudulent traps lie in wait. One false click, or the failure to install and update security software, can lead to identity theft, bogus bills and crashed computers.

People who want only to check e-mail or buy an airline ticket from their home computer now find they spend more time dodging malevolent software than they ever intended to spend online. Fending off the onslaught poses technical challenges for all but the savviest computer geeks.

“Put a firewall on. Patch this, download that. These are foreign terms to most people,” said Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher with LURHQ Corp., a Lombard, Ill.-based computer security firm. “The fixes may be beyond the skill levels of most consumers.”

Lipa’s decision to unplug her computer may be extreme, but it’s understandable. There’s growing frustration with a medium that at least some users say has become more trouble than it is worth, according to people in the computer industry.

“There’s no question a backlash is coming,” said Peter Firstbrook, a communications analyst with MetaGroup. “The Internet is getting as dirty as the real world.”

The problem appears to be getting worse. Computer viruses, once the playthings of bored young nerds seeking to impress one another, are now big business for criminals across the globe who automate software attacks to steal credit card numbers and send spam for profit.

Giant companies from Microsoft and America Online to AT&T and Yahoo seek to stop the rising tide of malevolent software online, but security experts say consumers should brace themselves for at least another year of trouble.

“Operating system vendors have lost sight of what customers want to do with their computers—e-mail, surf the Web, keep a Christmas list—and have loaded up the operating systems with whiz-bang features most people don’t need,” said Kevin Kealy, security scientist at AT&T Labs.

“Inevitably, your computer gets infected and crashes,” Kealy said. “You take it into the shop where some kid with a nose ring and ponytail tells you it’s your fault and charges you a couple hundred bucks to fix it.”

Operators of networks and e-mail services are working to identify and purge malevolent software before it reaches consumers.

AT&T believes it can identify and remove worms and viruses from its network, Kealy said. The carrier offers security protection to its large commercial customers and is testing a system it hopes will remove about 80 percent of bad traffic from its network.

Rising online fraud may make consumers more suspicious of the Internet and reluctant to undertake electronic transactions, said Ragu Gurumurthy, vice president with Boston consultancy Adventis.

“It’s a very confusing path ahead for consumers,” he said. “It could have a significant impact on e-commerce transactions in the year ahead.”

Tom DeFanti, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said using a computer these days is “like going to a Disneyland where you know you’ll get mugged. It’s no fun.”

DeFanti added, “the industry must fix this or people will bail on this technology.”