2- Secure personal information in your home, especially if you have roommates, employ outside help, or are having work done in your home.

3- minimize amount of information someone can steal, do not carry extra credit cards, your Social Security card, birth certificate or passport in your wallet or purse, except when needed. Always store your wallet in a safe place.

4- Make sure you have a locked mailbox, post office box or commercial mailbox service. When you are away from home for an extended time, have your mail held at Post Office, or ask someone you trust to pick it up.

5- Pickup new checks at bank. Do not have them mailed to your home.

6- Reduce number of credit cards you actively use to a minimum.

7- Cancel unused bank or credit accounts.

8- Keep a photocopy of all your credit cards, bank accounts, and investments.

9- Never give out your SSN, credit card number or other personal information unless you are sure source is secure.

By: Ashish Monga

What’s in a name?

Think of your business name as an external mask for your business. If it’s something your target audience like, they would consider checking it, if they don’t, in most cases you have lost a customer even before you could tell them what your product or service is. Your marketing campaign is usually like a beautiful outer covering for your business which attempts to portray it as best business on earth for various reasons and quality of your business name can have a great positive or negative impact on your marketing campaign. Many marketing campaigns are solely based on business names. Despite this many people, completely ignore spending time picking a good business name. This very often happens, when someone believes to have a winning business idea, and wants to kick it off as soon as possible.

Brainstorming for your name

Here are a few techniques which would help you brainstorm for ideal business names and come up with a wide variety of options to choose from.

Tools Needed:

Before you begin using techniques below here are some tools you would need to make your brainstorming session successful

1.A Notepad and Pen 2.A thesaurus (online of offline) - Online ones save a lot of time 3.A computer with Internet access 4.A language conversion tool (Preferably online)

Process:

Before you begin your brainstorming process, remember that you are brainstorming for ideas and goal is to generate as big a list as possible, therefore do not evaluate or criticise any ideas, and keep flow going.

1.Make a list of all suitable keywords you can think of, which relate to your business, or help describe your product or service. 2.Think of companies selling similar products or your competitors and note down their names. 3.Use a Thesaurus to look for synonyms of all words you have gathered. You should have a good list of words by now. 4.Use a language conversion tool such as one at freetranslation.com and look for French, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, etc. meanings of your words. Some of those words can be very trendy and especially suitable for businesses targeting youth market, or in hotel & entertainment industry. 5.Make combinations of partial words. You can even try combinations of English + Other Languages. Although these would be suitable only to certain creative business types.

Questions to help your Shortlist Your Selections