Internet corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats - suprise!

The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness. He warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way". He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

In PR we have known for over a decade about its potential and the associated hazards have been well documented for nearly as long.

'Managing Your Reputation in Cyberspace' originally published by Thorogood and now available here, showed a wide array of potential threats. It was also one of the first publications (Shel Holtz was the other key author at the time) to seek solutions.