The Internet is a wonderful thing. By firing up your computer and jacking it into a wall socket, you have instant access to millions of pages of information. You can learn about any subject under the sun, share your knowledge with others, market your business, buy almost any product imaginable, keep a journal, interact with friends on social networking sites, plot a route from anywhere to anywhere, back up the contents of your hard drive . . .

Or you can get saucy with strangers.

Concrete statistics on instant messaging are hard to come by, but suffice it to say that millions upon millions of ordinary people make daily use of software that allows them to "chat" to other users in real time. Until recently this was limited to typing, but the last few years have seen Webcam and VoIP technology reach such penetration that just about anyone can communicate via sound and video too.