The new economy, which had surged forward for several years, had something of an annus horribilis in 2000 - and it was nothing to do with Y2K.

In April, hundreds of millions of dollars was wiped off the value of Internet start-ups at the Nasdaq exchange. This led directly to the dot.com clearout. Financiers pulled the plug on several sites which, though highly unprofitable, had been worth a lot of money on the international stock markets. Without the cash cow of very rich benefactors, sites such as boo.com disappeared faster than all their investment finance had.

In May, the I LOVE YOU e-mail virus caused havoc around the world, wiping the hard drives of thousands unfortunate enough to have received and opened it. In December, a revealing email sent by a woman called Claire Swire to her boyfriend, Bradley Chait of London law firm Norton Rose, quickly became a media sensation as it went all around within hours, forwarded by people who thought it was just a funny hoax. It wasn't. The original forwarding was done by Chait himself to five colleagues, who started the ball rolling by hitting the send button themselves.

Whether Chait was guilty of anything other than being a cad was what exercised the minds of many, and imminent dismissal was predicted for him and his friends. His company's website (www.nortonrose.com) issued a statement under the heading "E-mail abuse".

Part of it read: "Naturally, we are disappointed in the behaviour of certain employees and concerned about a clear breach of Norton Rose's employment terms and conditions. This is an internal matter but to avoid speculation we would like to state that the employees have been disciplined but not dismissed. Dismissal was considered but not felt appropriate."

The redoubtable Ms Swire did better. She sold her story to the Mail on Sunday and was even offered a job by Playboy TV. It didn't end there for the issue of e-mail privacy though. Already this year, 10 people who worked at Liverpool's Royal & Sun Alliance insurance firm were fired for forwarding smutty e-mails, and another 80 employees of the company were suspended.

What you can or can't do with company e-mail addresses is set to become one of this year's most contentious new media issues. Using the Internet on company time is also likely to be a recurring topic this year.

If you are in doubt as to whether an e-mail you've received is a joke or a surreptitiously sent private one, the easiest way to steer clear of potential trouble is to delete it without having sent it on to others.

If you want to check out whether it is true or not, the Urban Legends site (www.urbanlegends.com) may have the answer. Even more thorough in its research on Internet phenomena is Snopes (www.snopes2.com).

Though the I LOVE YOU virus was very successful in its aim of destroying hard drives (we can only wonder, and shudder, at why anyone would want to do that) there are many more fake e-mail viruses in circulation. For details on this and other fakes, have a look at www.public.usit.net/lesjones/goodtimes.html.

ABC radio in Australia did an interesting feature on what it called "The Business of Cybersecurity - the War Against Privacy?", a transcript of which can be found at www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/ bbing/stories/s167110.htm. Its basic premise is that "in cyberspace, we don't know who the enemy is, or even what they want". Privacy is now a relevant issue for any teacher or pupil, lecturer or student who uses the Internet or e-mail in school or college.