Whether it's a phishing scam -- e-mails designed to trick people into revealing personal information, including passwords to banking sites -- or the well-worn Nigerian banking frauds, the Internet is rife with scam artists looking for potential victims.

To protect your family members online, make sure they know not to give out personal information to strangers, download e-mail attachments from people they don't know, or click on links from unsolicited e-mail offers. Check to ensure that their antivirus software is installed and up to date, which will help protect them from inadvertently downloading malicious programs designed to collect personal information from their computers. And set their spam filters and Internet browser security settings to the highest levels possible.