Shropshire Star comment: Scale of web threat is horrific

Belatedly Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, is thinking of getting up a posse. She has announced an extra £9 million to tackle those who use secret websites, the so-called dark web, to trade in guns, drugs, and child abuse images.

This will not change the big picture, which is that the internet is an international and lucrative playground for criminals, with the scale of the problem so large that if all the crimes were reported, and investigated by police, they would never have time for any other work.

Instead resources are being targeted to tackle the worst and most dangerous aspects of internet abuse, rather than the casual scams which are taking place on a massive and automated scale every day.

There is a sense that the public are starting to wake up to the implications of the internet after a long and misleading honeymoon. It has brought great benefits in entertainment, education, communication, and so on. What was once a toy is now an essential tool for many people.

It has spread around the world. Every person with a computer has become a broadcaster, information source - and personal data leak.

But it is the fact that so many people are using it in their everyday lives that has been disguising the true extent of the sinister side. There is a shoal of users and the protection from the sharks has come in the sheer weight of numbers.

Crooks and perverts can operate with a cloak of anonymity, or spin a web of falsehoods. Unmasking them takes time and expertise, and the trail may lead abroad or to a 12-year-old with a laptop in their bedroom.

The extent of the harvesting of data is extraordinary. They really do know everything about you. This is Big Brother for the 21st century. And there is some psychological syndrome which leads people to share aspects of their lives on the internet in a way did not and could not happen in the past.

Nobody should be misled into thinking that Amber Rudd's announcement is a solution. It is a gesture of intent, a move in the right direction.

Only 30 per cent of police forces currently have a cyber capability that reaches the minimum standard.

So people are going to have to protect themselves, through vigilance and awareness.

They may even consider that the internet is such a dangerous place that it is not worth going there.

A shame. But at least they will come to no harm.