Sometimes in life, it pays to know who you are doing business with before you do business with them.

This is especially true when doing business over the web.

A web site might lead you to believe you are doing business with someone on the up and up, when in reality the web site is just a front for con men or scammers.

So how do you find out?

One quick way is to do a 'whois' background check on the web site name.

Doing this costs nothing, and can quickly reveal who owns the web site, where the owners are located, and even provide their street address and phone number.

There are several whois checkers, but the one I use can be found at http://www.whois.net

Even if you don't need to use a whois search to do a site background check, it is a good idea to do a 'whois' on your own site name, just to see what the world can discover about your site.