While it is widely recognised that the internet offers each and every person in the world the chance to set up their own business, work from home and earn a lucrative income if they are willing to put the work in, are Internet Entrepreneurs leaving themselves open to fraud and ID theft?

The chances are that on your travels around the internet you will have across one of those “personal sales letter” sites, the ones which tell you all about the owner, where they live, how many people in their family (are you getting the message now?), etc. The ones which will give away everything about a person, including their phone number and their address!

As if that was not enough, you may also have come across a number of sites where the owners (in their wisdom) actually have a scanned copy of their signature on the site to make it more personal - but is this a step too far?

Can you imagine if you are a potential fraudster, you will have the persons name, probably a history their working life, their address, their phone number and a copy of their signature. If that is not enough to start some kind of fraudulent activity then what is?

What can often start out as a business venture whereby you look to give that personal feel and communicate with your customers on their level, has on numerous occasions led to substantial financial losses for many. On the surface there is no reason why you cannot interact with your readers on a personal level, but in reality there are literally thousands of fraudster trawling the internet for sites just like this – sites which actually do their hard work for them!

The moral of this post is, if you do run an online business only give the information that you need to give and no more. It is nice to be close to your customers but at the end of the day you are not out to make new friends, you just want their business!

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One area of the internet which is very popular but comes in for an awful lot of criticism is the social networking sector, the likes of MySpace, Facebook, BEBO, etc. But why do they come in for so much criticism?

The problem with these social networking sites is the over willingness for many members, normally youngsters, to give away far too much detail about their lives and interests. We are seeing more and more youngsters placing everything from their date of birth to their school address online for all to see. While 99% of those who view the information would never dream of doing anything with it, there are some who would. While the paedophiles quite rightly take the limelight as regulators fight to keep them offline and away from the most vulnerable of society, there are also a growing number of fraud cases involving older members of social networks.

Many people do not realise that by simply stating where you were born and when, together with your full name, anyone in the UK for example can obtain a copy of your birth certificate. Using this detail it is then possible to obtain passports, credit cards and the like, and then the real fun begins!

More and more people are suddenly finding themselves black listed for no reason or on the end of demands for repayment of monies they did not even know about. Too many of us think that it will never happen to us, and while the facts indicate that the chances of it happening to you are very low, the more you leave yourself open to attack the more chance it will happen. These fraudsters are no fools, they are ruthless, they are methodical and they will bleed you dry given a chance.

It is vital that when joining any of the vast array of social networking sites you do not give away personal information, because one day you might just regret it!

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