The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today debuted a new feature on its excellent Onguard Online site advising investors how to protect their personal data and avoid common Internet scams.

For obvious reasons, investors are prime targets for Internet scammers. Although the FTC and consumer advocacy groups rightly advise all Internet users to exercise caution in their online activities, that advise goes double for people making financial transactions or managing their accounts. This is not to say that people shouldn’t bank online. As the new Onguard Online page acknowledges, the Internet is a powerful tool for investing, but investors must understand that they are always potential targets.

Before engaging in financial transactions from their home computers, investors should make sure that their anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall tools are current and in good working order. From CDT’s standpoint, investors should simply avoid banking from public computers.

Some of the information on the new FTC page may seem like common sense, but it serves as a good reminder for those who take advantage of the Internet’s enormous convenience as an investment tool.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Consumer Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.