6. Protect yourself

A few sensible precautions can help you to protect yourself from becoming a victim of fraud:

- Be very careful about opening e-mails from people that you are not expecting an e-mail from.

- Ignore e-mails which tell you to go to their site and enter your user name and password

- Don't click on any links in e-mails that are from people you don't know - it could install a key logger onto your system for example.

- It is best to type in an URL yourself rather than use direct links supplied by email.

- Don't believe offers on the internet which seem to be too good to be true - they probably are.

- Don't part with money in advance for something which seems a bit suspicious

- Shred any personal documents before you throw them away