Dilbert's question -- "You want me to ask our vendor if his software will hunt down our payroll data from across the internet and try to kill it?" -- is funny because it restates his boss's humorously inaccurate idea about internet security in an exaggerated way.

But there probably were plenty of readers who didn't get the joke at all.

After all, many of us use the internet without understanding it. Many of us, for that matter, use electricity without understanding it. You push a button, the magic happens. If that's your mental image of how something works, then it's no surprise if you have only the faintest idea of what dangers and safeguards there might be in using it.

When the telephone was first invented, people had some concerns that seem funny to us now. For example, people worried that a woman might call a man -- and he would answer without being properly dressed.  He would not, you see, have realized that it was a woman who was calling him! The exclamation point is there to help you reaize that people found this idea shocking and distressing. They probably couldn't have articulated exactly what consequence that situation might lead to, but it worried them. We can't really reproduce the mindset that made this something to worry about, because we have relaxed about phones, whether we understand them or not.

We've relaxed about electricity, too. We know that it does have some dangers, but we don't usually worry that it's leaking out of our light sockets. People used to worry about that.

Just so, those who worry about the security of online EIPP services like SmartPay are worrying unnecessarily just because they don't understand that e-invoicing is more secure than paper billing.They can't articulate just what might happen or how it could possibly happen, but they worry.

We thought Dilbert was funny today. But we don't agree that people who worry about the security of online financial transactions are ignorant or foolish, as the cartoon implies. It's a natural reaction to new technologies. And Onsharp's SmartPay electronic billing system is prepared for that. You can help your customers become comfortable with the SmartPay system by using a telephone option until they become confident about using SmartPay themselves.

At that point, they'll also see the humor in this cartoon.