I've recently started a new website, Yacads.com- Free Auctions and Classifieds, and already have been faced with a few customers who attempted to pay for some extras with fraudulent information. It's amazing to me that people can be so careless with their financial website information. But are they really being careless? In my opinion it's really more of a trust and lack of knowledge issue. Individuals that get an email from Paypal and click the link to go to the site will enter their individual login information without a second thought. NEVER DO THIS! I believe there are more scams on the internet than there are individuals. With that said, the number one most important habit you can have is checking the URL of the website you are logging into. A financial institution or a website that stores any kind of financial information should always have an s after the http for example: http://www.example.com is not a secure site, whereas https://www.example.com is secure. This is the first thing you should look for before logging into a site containing your financial information. The next step is to know the URL itself. If you click a link in an email that says click here and go to a login that looks identical to paypal (likely even with the https:), you need to know th URL of paypal. If the URL in your browser says https://www.login.com/paypal.html is it safe to login? NO! This website URL is "https://www.login.com" and Paypals URL is "https://www.paypal.com". To make a long story short always know the URL of the website you are going to, and double check it before entering any information. I think this simple habit could prevent 90% of issues (that's my personal guesstimate). To protect yourself otherwise, keep your software and antivirus information up to date. Avoid sites that are security risks. Hacking is not generally a concern of most individuals simply due to obscurity. If your a large company or insanely wealthy you may need to worry about it, but that doesn't cover most of us. In short, keep antivirus and software running and up to date and check your URL's and you can safely avoid virtually all of the "internet muggers" and keep your identity safe online

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