Although fraud is unlikely and fraudulent web businesses don't last long before the web population zeros in and snuffs them out, it's still prudent to take all the precautions that you would buying from any vendor. After all, the Internet is perhaps the most dramatic economic phenomenon of the decade and is challenging many cherished assumptions about how to compete, innovate, and manage. Many argue that the Internet is changing the guiding logic of business and creating a new framework for prosperity. There are all types of networks - sales, distribution, clubs, parties, lodges, chambers, associations, etc. In theory and often practice, networks further the ends of their members by creating an opportunity for mutually beneficial relationships.
Interaction is key in networking - or in other words two way communication.
In the past, if one chooses to go back far enough, face to face communication was the only means of networking due to the technological limitations. Of course, print media to a limited degree, the telegraph, telephone, and various modes of modern transportation, etc. increased the ability of people to network with more people over wider areas and more quickly. This interconnectedness has grown more in the last 20 years than all of previous history if one defines interconnectedness as the means for the most number of people to exchange ideas, goods, and services in the most efficient way possible. With the onset of the Internet phone, teleconferencing, and many other technologies, we can expect this trend to continue at an even faster rate than what was previously possible. Perhaps it is too early to tell for certain, but, here are several observations that indicate some things are fundamentally different with respect to doing business on the Internet verus a strictly off-line approach, especially with regard to networking.