Professor Hannu H. Kari from Helsinki University of Technology says he first expects service reliability to be compromised. As a result, attempts at manipulating information on the Internet will increase and be more and more successful.

Problems will be further exacerbated by the proliferation of attacks on the web through viruses and spam.

Finally, the entire world wide web will collapse when it is no longer regarded as a reliable source for information , says Professor Hannu Kari.

The Finnish professor can be described as cautious in his estimate of the world wide web's decline and fall. Some of his peers have predicted an even swifter downfall.

Kari says that the Internet can yet be saved, if its content and structure is reshaped.

He says that it should be made possible to track down and identify wrongdoers on the net.

"Nowadays, you can't be sure who the real sender of an email is", Kari says.

Kari admits he is pessimistic about the Internet's future and envisages that the world will eventually have to take back a step in time and learn how to live without the Internet.

"In practice, the worst threat is that there are so many malicious people around who want to wreak havoc", Kari notes.

What makes their sabotaging of the web easier is the fact that many people fail to download the latest security upgrades on a regular basis.

Kari estimates that approximately two percent of PCs connected to the world wide web lack sufficient security upgrades. He says that number of PCs would be enough to paralyse any part of the Internet.