Christmas crackers

I was shocked to learn that a typical UK employee will spend about two working days using their office PC to shop online between now and Christmas.

Figures from IT professionals' body ISACA finds so-called workers will use up an average of 14.4 hours trawling the web for festive bargains. One in 10 will spend more than 30 hours doing so.

ISACA claims that employees who shop online, oblivious to the threat of spam, phishing and viruses, "are also likely to engage in other high-risk behaviours".

Apparently, more than half bank online, two-fifths follow email links to shopping sites and 15 per cent click on social networking links.

Steady on. I've jumped out of planes and goaded heavyweight boxers. But internet banking?! Some things are too high-risk even for me.