Wicked web

Breathing faster, his hands moved surely even though he wastrembling. "I want you now," she said. He found it difficult to getthe words out. "I want you too." Shaking, sweating, he could hardlycontrol himself when he heard a creak on the stair outside.

Quickly he grabbed the mouse, clicking wildly until all that wasleft on his computer screen was a spreadsheet. The door opened,providing a second source of light along with the monitor. "Stilldoing that research?" said his wife. "The company works you toohard."

"Yes," he replied. "But you just go to bed and I'll join you whenI've finished." Minutes later he was back on-line.

To some this may seem like the ultimate in safe sex; to others itis little different from being physically unfaithful. "He isfocusing attention on to another relationship," says ElizabethField, a 25-year-old woman who has set up a web business in Chicago,www.infidelitybusters.com.

For a little under pounds 40 she will contact your possibly cyber-cheating partner in one of the internet's many chat rooms and seehow responsive they are to the wrong kind of offers. Most of thesechat rooms are innocuous, not to say dull - many are places wherepeople discuss anything from football to childcare. But inevitably,given human nature, many focus on sex.

"They are often a gateway to actually meeting another person,"says Field. That can be very much the dark side of the internet.

Last year it brought down one of the internet's brightest stars,Patrick Naughton. At 34, he was a top executive with Infoseek, acompany affiliated to Walt Disney. He was earning more than GBP120,000 a year with stock options worth GBP 10 million. Hiscomfortable suburban home was in Seattle, surrounded by Microsoftexecutives.

On 14 September he flew from Seattle into Los Angeles and headedfor Santa Monica pier, the backdrop for many Baywatch adventures.The person he expected to see there was "KrisLA", a 13-year-old girlhe had met in an internet chat room where he used the name"hotseattle". In fact "KrisLA" was Bruce Applin, a former US Marinenow working for the FBI.

Naughton was arrested and charged with travelling interstate withthe intent to have sex with a minor, possession of child pornographyand using the internet to induce a minor into sexual activity. Hewas fired from his job, lost his stock options and his wife filedfor divorce.

But the story does not end there. The essence of Naughton'sdefence is that people who visit an area called "dad&daughtersex"are there to act out their fantasies, not to fulfil them in reality,and that he did not actually expect the person he met to be 13. Itdoes differ from cases where paedophiles have visited areas aimed atchildren in order to make contact with them. Naughton, however, haspleaded guilty to some of the charges and is due to be sentenced inAugust.

The way he was caught - by a man posing as a little girl - isalso something that Field has been able to use. She can equally wellpretend to be a man in order to catch a cyber-cheating girlfriend.But technology is rapidly catching up.

Video-conferencing is no longer the preserve of big companies.Anybody willing to spend as little as GBP 30 can buy a web camera toplug into a PC. Then, using a free program such as Microsoft'sNetMeeting or ICQ - as in "I seek you" - they can meet up withsimilarly-minded people on-line.

The pictures are jerky and more than a little fuzzy. Sometimesthe sound is as clear as an ordinary phone call, but more often itis closer to the quality of an old mobile. But at least you knowthat "blonde36DD" is who she says she is and not some fat, middle-aged bloke sitting typing in his grubby underpants.

There are also companies trying to go one further than sex byvideo-conference with something they call "cyberdildonics". Thesedevices actually exist for men and women. The idea is that they canbe operated remotely over the internet as a substitute for actualphysical contact. But we still have some way to go before anybodywill choose to spend a night of passion with their laptop.

None of this has tempted me to fit a camera to my computer, letalone a cyberdildonics device. But I have visited a few sex chatrooms. All in the interests of research. Honest.

Somebody once described the experience as being like trying tomake love while typing a novel with one hand. Even Jeffrey Archerwould find that a challenge. It was certainly not sexuallystimulating. In fact, I found a new turn-off - people who cannotspell. And they did not seem to be turned on when I tried to correctthem.