Work at home? Love it?  Sure you do... until your customers start calling you late at night and your insurance agent shows up on your doorstep finding you dressed in your bathrobe and holding onto your drooling baby. If all those of us who work at home really wanted to spend all of our time dressed up and ready for company, we'd still work back in that stuffy office.

Those of us who work at home have very special privacy requirements and if the right steps aren't taken, we can lose our personal privacy as a result of working at home.  If you work at home and you haven't already learned this the hard way, it's not too late to implement some simple steps to ensure your personal safety and privacy.

Here are some examples:

Sarah currently works at home in her New Jersey apartment. She's had several work at home jobs but currently she's the Newsletter Editor for a food chain supply company. For her first work at home job she was a Dispatcher for a roofing company. She lived nearby to the owner and her work at home job sometimes involved distributing paychecks, running a few errands and doing general liaison work with the roofing contractors that were hired by the roofing contractor.  She first learned about the need for people who work at home to protect their privacy when she started having a problem with drunk roofing contractors showing up on her doorstep for their paychecks. Another time she was verbally assaulted by another contractor who was emotionally-unstable and was recently fired from the company for not showing up at work.

Other people who work at home have reported similiar problems. Ed S., a Colorado-based stock broker who works at home found that he had far too many interruptions from pushy insurance people after he enrolled his business with his local Chamber of Commerce and was published in their directory. Celeste W., who holds down two separate work at home jobs from her home in northern Florida unfondly recalls her most embarrassing moment... the day that her local newspaper sent one of their sales people to her home to see if her company wanted to buy advertising... she looked over to see the salesman peering through her window, catching her in the compromised position of being only half-dressed as she was dashing from her kitchen to the bedroom to finish dressing.

If we work at home, it should not automatically mean that we must give up our personal security or privacy. Let's invest a little effort in the beginning and we'll enjoy far greater security and peace of mind later.

Simple steps you can take to protect your personal privacy if you work at home.

Who's been giving out your personal information if you work athome?