Tips to avoid being conned online

The internet or the World Wide Web provides for the average person an extraordinary number of opportunities to make money online at the click of a mouse. This said, it also provides quite a number of opportunities to also make easy money of the average person for those with illicit intent. People who earn money online working from home and online business has doubled approximately every 3-5 years. It is estimated that with the proportional growth of the internet there is a similar proportional growth in illegal activities online.
Apart from the genuine and legitimate money making sites there are malicious and suspicious sites that only serve the evil ends of a select few. Surfing online and visiting select money making sites can at times be a very cautious activity. There are sites that present themselves to be clean as a whistle online business and above board. However at the end of day their sole purpose as is in most cases is to steal your money.
These sites do this by a variety of ways. This can range from falsely presenting themselves to collect your personal data, to uploading malicious software into your computer. Some sites are so well developed that they have spying software to look into your system, while you are on their site. The spying can be done by keeping you onsite with distractions, connected and logged on.
Here are a couple of tips that will go a long way to preventing you from being conned, falling victim to identity theft, and making someone happy with your money.

1. Protect Your Computer - ensure that your operating system, anti-viral, anti-spyware and firewall are updated and running.

2. Do not open suspicious emails - some emails carry with them malicious software such as "Trojan horses" which can steal your personal information.

3. Do not go directly to sites that you are unfamiliar with - Use a search engine to access the site. If the site address is www.realmoneysense.com (which is a very legitimate site) type it in the search box. You will be warned by the search engine of the intent of the site.

4. If when you are visiting a site and for some reason you cannot close the window or leave, hit the escape key. If this fails use the Control, Alt, and Delete Keys together. This will bring up the task manager in Windows(r) to help you close the window. If this fails the shut down the internet connection and restart your computer.

5. Try to avoid giving out too many personal details, on social networking sites. Most of the data is readily available to the general public and can even be seen with privacy and preferences on.

6. Look out for verified logos on sites, such as VeriSign, Thawte, GeoTrust, etc, when conducting financial transactions. These logos will be active links and not just images giving information on the site and its safety.

7. Check emails regularly, as most sites that conduct financial transactions that you are linked to will notify you of your transactions with them.

8. Set up a secondary email account - this should be used when filling out details on sites you are not sure of. This move will also prevent your email and your contacts from being hacked and being spammed.

9. Unless requested by a site don`t give out too much personal details. Stick to the online form, don`t add anything extra

10. If you see an opportunity that you would like to try, do a search with the Website name or offer and add the word "scam" after the search item. If there have been reports of scam by the site or program it will come up in most searches.

11. You will not earn money or similar for not doing anything online. There is no such thing as free money online. Sites will ask you for anything from an investment, info, clicks, referral emails, etc; so that they can ultimately make money for the cash that they have given you.

12. Money does not usually appear instantly, and you will not receive a windfall overnight unless it is a lottery, an inheritance, or similar. Sites that promise you to become rich overnight will either be a new and an extremely innovative idea or most likely a scam.

13. If a site says free and then requests a payment at the end, then that should raise some eyebrows about a possible scam.

14. Do not pay blind - most genuine sites that suggest or sell moneymaking ventures have endorsements, real life examples with real people and even forums, to help sell their business. A point however to note; there is a story about a man from Iowa who saw his picture on a web site endorsing a product. The trouble is he didn`t have and have never used a computer in his life and he knew nothing about the product.

15. Do not pay for money making business, work from home or otherwise, before seeing samples, reading endorsements and having a clear understanding of what it is all about. READ THE FINE PRINT OF ANY AGREEMENT.

16. Be wary of any letters, emails, notification stating that you have won a jackpot, prize or lotto. Some of these letters can be very convincing. So much so that you would throw caution to the wind and give out personal details, make payments to get money and such. The most important thing to note is if you haven`t entered a competition, lottery, or have a rich relative that died, how can you be entitled to money?

17. If you plan to pay and make money online it is good to have an online account. Do not use your credit card, etc online unless it is necessary. There are a lot of good online banking sites, such as PayPal or NETELLER.

18. Check back all balances on your accounts regularly. This way you will ensure that what you paid for was paid for and what shouldn`t have been paid for can be stopped.

19. When conducting a transaction or purchase online it is always good to have an idea as to the recourse that you will have in the matter. This can be refunds , fraud reporting, regulatory agency, search engine reporting, etc

20. Always make sure that you are logged of a site or your computer when you are finished any transaction. This will ensure that there is unauthorised access to you account or your computer and its details.

The tips above will work most of the time but with the continuing evolution of systems and software it is advisable to always be careful when conducting all transactions online.

Check out:

http://www.realmoneysense.com