One of the most commonly dangerous practices out there is clicking on each and every link on a site or in an email message. There are many messages or sites that will try to trick you into believing a site is the one you want. And then will ask you questions at the fraudulent site that you wouldn't answer at a site you didn't trust, like "what is your credit card number (we need it because we are concerned about your security)". This is called phishing. They might call BestBoy.com or BestBùy.com which takes you to a site that looks close to BestBuy.com. I have given some crude examples but there are much more effective ways to trick you. When you hover over a link in a browser, the address is displayed. Make sure the part before ".com", ".net" or the like is where you think you should go. Even better, when you want to visit bestbuy.com, go there with an address you know and not what the link says. Another layer of protection is included with modern browsers like IE7, Firefox2, or Opera v9. They have what they call "phishing filters" which alerts you when a site seems to be trying to trick you. Be sure to turn those filters on and think twice before trusting any site that it warns you about. If you get in the habit of trusting each and every site no matter what then you'll be setting yourself up for disaster when the warning is real. Another good way to avoid most of the problem sites is to always hover your mouse over the link, look at the lower left of your screen and verify the URL displayed is the one you expect to go to. Look at the part before ".com", ".net", etc. if that is not what you know to be the site then type the site you know into your browsers address field and follow their menus to what you want. Unfortunately, not all sites are what you expect. More than one ecommerce site I've been to uses a large company to process payments. One of my utilities use a different site for check as opposed to credit card online payments. The first time I went there I was careful since I didn't know if it was somekind of fraud or hacker scheme. After a while I learned to expect it from that site. If you ever think you've run into a phishing scheme let the correct site know about it. No legit business wants people running around pretending to be them. Help the company out and let them know when it is happening.