Ana Bryce posted an interesting story on her blog a few weeks ago on ensuring you understand what you are getting yourself into with business ventures. This goes for both online and offline ventures. It seems a lot of people get pulled into scam type ventures online, perhaps even more than ones offline. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn’t. I’m sure everyone has heard that cliché in the past and it still holds true.
I’m not sure what makes so many victims online and especially in the IM arena. It seems almost every week you read about someone who lost something or was ripped off by someone. A lot this probably stems from people following the dream of easy riches and not really considering the possible implications of trusting the wrong person. Let take for example people asking for SSN’s for affiliate programs. While this is the law, why would anyone enter in their Social Security number in a s site that looks like it was built from free web template and on top of that does not encrypt the data. Here is a little secret you may or may not know. In order to obtain a SSL certificate the company must prove they are who they say they are. Now this can be done through a proxy such as your webhost or you must apply yourself. This gives you an added level of security as it helps ensure the person you are giving your information to is who they actually say they are. Personally when every I start to sign up for an affiliate program on a site that cannot even take the time to ensure the safety of my data then I just move on. There are plenty of places to become affiliates of that practice better business tactics.
