If you're in business you know that often the competition can be quite dishonest and often they will go to lengths to hurt your business. In fact in all my years in business I have seen just about every single trick they can possibly be played against me. Every single tactic, bad mouthing and you use of even government agencies to attack.

In the 27 years in business I have seen by competitors use Associates in business to help them in getting information. I have watched competitors try to go through thru vendors, bankers and VC. I have seen customers who were not actually customers pretend to be somebody they were not simply to get information, brochures, prospectuses, disclosure documents, tax returns and you name it. It is called corporate espionage and the even write books about it. In fact you can get a degree in corporate espionage believe it or not.

So much for a level playing field when your competition is cheating. What is even worse is often these competitors use the government, which collects information on forms and makes all this information free to the public. It's amazing that the government now says it is going to protect the consumer and small-business person against identity theft, as generally the government is the one that asked for the information and it makes it available to anyone who wants it.

Often we find that competitors when caught trying to get information from you will say everyone else does it. Indeed, maybe they do, but does that make it right. It is unfortunate that competitors will not compete in the free market and will teach in any way they can to beat you. In my business career we always beat the competition so they were always beating down our doors calling up and pretending to be customers, government agencies or even vendors. Sometimes they would enlist the vendors to snoop for information from us.

In business you must run your own race, but at the same time he needs no or your competition is at all times and you must protect yourself from giving away information inadvertently to competitors who will use that information against you. You must develop a strategy to protect yourself from dishonest competitors and always know who you are dealing with. Please consider this in 2006.