The bad news is that you can easily find trouble online. The good news is that a healthy dose of common sense and education can minimize your risks.
Let's start with don't let yourself be victimized by fraud. It's easy to say, but fraud is hard to detect.
One of the best examples I've ever seen involved BestBuy.com. This is from an email I received:
"Dear customer,
Recently we have received an order made by using your personal credit card information....Our Fraud Department has some suspicions regarding this order and we need you to visit a special Fraud Department page at our web store where you can confirm or decline this transaction by providing us with the correct information....Click the link below to visit a special Fraud Department page to resolve the cause of the problem."
When I received this one, it had me scratching my head. While it didn't pass the smell test, it looked so real. It used the BestBuy.com logo and gave me a chance to "decline this transaction."
The big hint was that the "link below" did not take me to BestBuy.com, but rather it went to "digitalgamma.com." Once there, it asked for my credit card information and other stuff that could only help some criminal steal my identity. Oh how quickly the smell test went putrid. Still, I can only imagine how many people this scam has duped.
Just remember that neither your bank nor anybody legitimate is ever going to send you an email out-of-the-blue asking you for private information. If in doubt, call the supposed sender of the email.
Now let's flip from you being a victim to you being a bad guy, even if it's unintentional.
While I think that this next point should be obvious to everyone, experience tells me that it is not. It's actually quite simple. The same law that applies where you sit is the same law that applies to your online behavior.
I don't know why intelligent people think that cyberspace is a real place with its own law or even no law. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
If you libel someone on a website, she can sue you just as she could if you did it in a book. If you download illegal child pornography, you can go to jail just as you could if you bought a magazine. If you gamble online, you might as well be in an illegal casino. If you click "I accept" to an online agreement, you should assume that you've entered into a contract.
One novel idea that I have is that you might consider actually reading the agreement before you "accept" it. When they come to collect your first born like you agreed to in the contract you "accepted," you'll have nobody but yourself to blame since you didn't read what you "signed."
Let me summarize online common sense by just suggesting that you treat the online world like a major intersection in a big city. Anything can come your way, but if you're careful, you'll be just fine.
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