How to Protect Teens Who Operate Online Businesses

The Internet has made quite a few enterprising teens proud business owners in recent years, thanks in part to parents who know how to protect teens who operate online businesses. Even adults are often victims to online predators seeking to stalk, steal, and abuse, and teens sometimes make even easier targets with their natural naivety and inexperience. The real danger here lies in the fact that most parents are not technologically savvy, and most could not even begin to understand how their teens are turning profits online. So how can a parent protect a teen business owner who knows more about the Web than they do? Fortunately, you don't have to be an expert at web business to know when danger is near. The following are tips that you can use to keep your teenager's online entrepreneurial pursuits safer and more fulfilling.

Teen online business protection rule #1: Always use a pen name. While teens do indeed have to market themselves in order to succeed, creating a pen name that can be used again and again is just as business smart as using a real name, and much safer (and it is a practice often used by adult online business owners, as well). While creating financial accounts such as with online banking or PayPal will require the use of a legal name, most other uses of personal names are unnecessary. Anything that links your teen's work to a website, service, or creative outlet can be used to find personal information. Therefore, a pen name should be used for absolutely everything.

Teen online business protection rule #2: Use a business email address for PayPal accounts. Because Web clients who pay through PayPal tools must usually enter your teen's email address to render payment, make sure that he/she has created an email address that cannot be traced to their personal email account. This is for both privacy reasons and to prevent spam and viruses. If an account becomes corrupt, your teen can easily create a new email address to link to their PayPal account, a process that is quite time consuming if a personal account is used.