The benefits of working at home are numerous, especially for wahms (work at home moms). There’s no commute, and you can wear pajamas to “the office.” Unfortunately, there’s always a downside. By working out of the house, the home network is vulnerable to all sorts of malicious scams and viruses. This puts the entire family at risk for vicious attacks that threaten the family’s physical and financial safety.

How to Identify Work-at-Home Scams

Unfortunately, not all work at home positions are legit. The Internet is full of scammers hoping to prey on innocent victims seeking home-based work opportunities. There are many different types of work-at-home scams, including these:

• Companies that claim they pay you to stuff envelopes or do at-home craft assembly
• Mystery shopper
• Companies that ask you to buy into home-based businesses, such as email processing or medical billing
• Companies that ask you to pay a fee to see lists of at-home positions you can apply to
• Typing at home positions
• Companies that ask you to process payments, transfer funds, or reship products

Sometimes, it’s not just your money you’ll lose by falling victim to a work at home scam. You could lose your freedom by accidentally doing something illegal. The FBI reports that most victims aren’t aware they’re engaging in illegal activities until they’ve been charged with a crime. The bureau recommends that you “Remain skeptical of unsolicited job offers that sound too good to be true and report any scams you might encounter.”

How to Protect Your Computer and Internet from Viruses, Adware, and Malware

If you work at home, it’s highly likely you’ll spend the majority of your business hours engaged in online activities. Whether you’re telecommuting or freelancing, most employers ask that you have a working computer and Internet access. The Internet is used to submit work, contact customers, promote oneself, and communicate with superiors (among other things). Because you’re spending so much time online, you’re facing an increased security risk.

The best way to protect yourself is to outfit all of your home computers with virus protection, regardless of whether they’re used for work or not. Dedicated virus protection is your greatest defense against malicious attacks. Look for platform-specific antivirus software, such as antivirus for Mac or antivirus for PC. By choosing antivirus protection that is specific to your computer, you’re ensuring that your virus protection is going to work properly, as well as provide specific updates designed to coordinate with your computer. Trend Micro points out that this kind of software is also capable of managing your online reputation, which is increasingly important for both individuals and businesses.

Here are more ways to protect yourself against hacking:

• Change your wireless password often, and do not share the password with anyone you don’t fully trust.
• Password protect everything, but do not use the same password for everything. Instead, use different passwords and employ the use of a password manager to remember them all.
• Never turn off your antivirus or firewall
• Update your computer regularly
• Turn off your computer when it’s not in use

How to Identify Potentially Threatening People

Some job postings are not legitimate, but may seem legitimate. The people behind these postings are hoping to target you, and elicit information that could make it easy for them to hack your computer, hack your bank account, or steal your identity. Furthermore, if a potential employer ever asks for significantly identifying information, such as your social security number, you’ll want to investigate that the company is legitimate before providing such information.

Forbes’s recommends that you be aware of scams, by knowing the warning signs. “Job listings that promise easy money for easy work, don’t have the hiring company’s name identified, use public email domains as the “respond to” address (such as @hotmail.com, @gmail.com, or the anonymous @craigslist.com emails), or use all capitalized letters or lots of !!! and $$$ punctuation, are all red flags that should warrant more research on the company.”

Unfortunately, the reality is: more scams exist online than legitimate work at home positions. These scams have been known to put families in harm’s way. To avoid this common pitfall, do your research, stay alert, and keep your computer protected at all times.