Top 10 worst things about the web

2. Fraud
Iain Thomson: The facility for low cost, convincing communication that is the essence of the web has caused a boom in cases of fraud.

Fraudsters have been around as long as mankind. There were probably Neanderthals bilking each other out of flint tools on the promise of mammoth haunches that failed to materialise back in the dawn of time and there's not much evidence that things have improved since then.

Now, particularly with web email, there is an ideal way for fraudsters to tempt the greedy and credulous. One estimate puts the amount of revenue generated by schemes like 419 scams (the letters offering you a share in a huge sum of money in exchange for a small finders fee) is over a million dollars a week.

With the inclination and the right tools fraudsters can create convincing online personas that are used to fleece hundreds of people at a time. It's a long way from the convincing spiv who would have to traipse around door to door or sending out letters using regular postage. The communication that is such a good feature of the web is being used for nefarious purposes and we are a long way from finding a solution.

Shaun Nichols: Fraud is yet another occurrence that may not have been invented after the web, but it was most certainly given new life by it.

Fraudsters used to be thought of as slick-talking cons. Now they can be anyone from a bored teenager in Canada to a crime syndicate in Eastern Europe or a family trying to make a living in Nigeria.

Again, the problem comes down to anonymity. Just as nobody on the internet knows you're a dog, they also don't know that you're not a Swiss bank executive or a Mastercard account manager. The web has streamlined and democratised fraud, making a sort of perfect storm for criminal activity to flourish.

Security companies and law enforcement groups are making inroads into shutting down some of these operations, but the sad truth is that they remain woefully outmanned and outgunned by the bad guys, and it appears that we are a long way from even slowing the tide of fraud on the web, let alone making progress towards stopping it.

1. Disinformation
Iain Thomson: If information is the best thing about the web, then disinformation has to be the worst. The web has allowed vast amounts of information to be propagated online, but very quickly people realised that it could be used for disinformation as well.

People are trusting souls and used to believe information they found on the web, but now the phrase 'I read it on the internet' has become a term of derision.

The situation has not been helped by services like Wikipedia. While the online encyclopaedia is a good thing, it has also allowed misinformation to spread more quickly and effectively. It has even allowed the creation of alternative information sources which are intentionally biased, such as Wikipedia rip-off Conservapedia.

Sometimes I fear for where this is leading us. With lies and half-truths so prevalent on the web, people can find sources that appear to back up almost any crazy notion, and sub-industries have grown up to supply them. Bloggers mobilise to spread disinformation and memes to advance their causes, phony web sites support quack medical cures that will not deliver and businesses subvert online review sites to make themselves look better.

My hope is that people will react against this by becoming more critical of what they read online. Not dismissing material out of hand, but analysing its source, corroborating data and then making a rational decision based on that research.

A technical fix for the problem would be very difficult, if not impossible to achieve. Instead we will all have to become a lot more web-savvy and take responsibility for the data we consume.

Shaun Nichols: If there's one constant in the history of mankind, it's that every new discovery brings a potential for danger roughly equal to its potential for usefulness. For every area in which the web has made life easier, it has also added a way in which life can be ruined.

Just as the wealth of information created by the web has given humanity unprecedented access to knowledge and the ability to collaborate and organise, so it has provided the tools for mankind to inflict great damage upon itself.

If knowledge is power, then the web is the most potent source of power this planet has seen in centuries. A successful web site has the ability to reach millions of people each day. As terrorist groups have demonstrated in recent years, the web is a useful way to collaborate, but also a frighteningly effective way to recruit and manipulate new followers to a destructive cause.

As Iain pointed out, there is no easy or readily apparent solution to this problem. We are really only beginning to realise the potential of the web, and as we continue to develop and mature online, it is almost certain that new and even more menacing dangers will emerge. Certainly this is something to consider and be wary of as we move forward into Web 3.0 and beyond.