Make a list of all the sites where critical data is potentially given out i.e. banking online, paying bills online etc. Carefully find all the websites that these relate to and bookmark them. This prevents you using any disguised links that may arrive in an email.

By doing this all the type of email attacks are practically solved. Be careful about which sites you allow Active X scripts to run from not all are friendly better to be cautious than to have your wallet emptied.

Create your own secure site list and only add carefully to this list get recommendations of which are good sites. Again I find that I tend to only use a few well known sites for virtually all my online shopping activities.

Think about your web searches a clever company can get to the top of a Google search engine listing without being a reputable one. It's just a case of that they are better at search engine optimisation than other companies.

One of the things you must realize is that criminals tend to pay better than legitimate business or have an easy cash flow situation so they afford to employ the best optomisation methods. So don't be misled by this as there was a car repair company using a trick to get to the top of Google to attract business.

Google does a very good job of re evaluating websites in their index and most so black hat optomisation methods are leading to dodgy websites being expelled from the Google index.

By being more rigorous with your dealings with both the internet and the real world you become less of and attractive proposition to online thiefs. By thinking what do you want to achieve before acting online the criminal stands less chance of getting your details.

At the moment a lot of legitamate internet marketeers use a website called tinyurl this disguisises large affiliate links to much smaller ones that look a little more attractive. Although most internet marketees are legitimate in their method of generating web traffic some are not and disguise website information in a effort to be anonymous.

I tend to think of the online world as quite a bit like swimming in the sea we all enjoy a good swim in the sea but in the sea lives bloddy big sharks that will take a bite out of you. The internet criminals are using ever so more sophisticated technology including breaking into offices to install key loggers into keyboards.

Then they take the phone number of the extension ring you up pretending to be your bank etc and of course you get suspicious but you go and log into your bank account and hey presto they got your details.

Important if you get a suspicious call like that phone the bank dont log in and get someone to look at your keyboard. You would be suprised how much money has been gained by this scam alone.

Look after yourself online its a big bad world and you want to keep what belongs to you.