Here are some things you can do to protect yourself: 1) Don’t give out your Social Security number unless it is absolutely necessary. Many companies collect more information than they really need. Make sure that it's something they have to have and make sure they'll protect your privacy.

When you get a mail from your bank asking you to visit a website link and submit your Debit/Credit card number, online banking password, etc, don’t just jump onto website and start entering info yet. Almost all banks won't ask you for this information, as this info will already be in their systems. It takes just 5 minutes to call up bank and ask them, whether they 'really' sent a mail asking for info.

Banks always send you credit card offers and other mailers to your home address. In case you are not interested in those offers, don’t just dump them into your waste bin. It would be wise to shred these papers before you dump them for good. If you don’t do this, be ready for a huge credit card bill next month—there might be people who might just go through your waste bin, gather these 'dumped' papers and use these to get a credit card for them in your name!

2) Watch for your checkbook. Most of us have a habit of keeping a few check leaves signed in advance. Someone could just misuse these leaves, in case it gets into wrong hands.

3) When using a computer for Internet purposes in public places, keep an eye on people who shoulder-surf. Also, clear browser cache, logout of all websites you might have logged into and delete files you might have downloaded onto PC, before you leave place.

4) Never give out personal information on phone to someone you don't know and who initiated call. Often, scammers could just call you up pretending to be financial services company and request information to be provided over phone.

One important question -- have you done your market research?

I know --market research, how boring!

But before you tune out and disregard question, think about what it will take to start your online business. You're going to be investing lots of energy and time as well as money. Don't you want to make sure your product or service has potential?

You bet you do! If you don't, all your efforts and money could be wasted and your business may become another online casualty. It happens all time.

So, before you get too anxious, consider following:

Is there a market for your idea? Don't assume that just because you, your family and friends love your idea, it's going to be a profitable one. There's a big world out there and what you consider a great idea may not be suitable for rest of world, so let's make sure it has potential.

There are 4 things you need to consider:

- What is online demand? - Who's your Competition? - What kind of profit can you make?

Online Demand

The simplest way to find out if your product or service has potential is to simply find out what online supply and demand is.

This is done by taking supply or number of competing sites for a product or service and dividing it by demand or how much product or service is searched for. The lower result, better.

For example, let's say you want to sell 'porcelain dolls' but you're also considering selling charm bracelets. Let's see what better choice might be by looking at supply and demand.

My search engine of choice is Google so when I type in 'porcelain dolls' into Google it returned 3,630,000 competing sites as of this writing.

My keyword search tool of choice is Overture, so when I type 'porcelain dolls' into overture search term tool results are 17946.