Everyone has to lie from time to time. People lie to avoid hurting someone's feelings or to save them from embarrassment. But unfortunately there are other people, people not as honest as us, that are career liars. So how do you avoid the con-men and scamsters trying to cheat you out of your money? Asking people to take a lie detector test isn't really practical. Some clues to a person's honesty are explained below.

Lying is a stressful business for all but the habitual liar. The guilt and fear of getting caught produce symptoms which can point to a liar. One of these actions alone may not mean anything but several of them may be significant. You have to look at the whole picture when judging truthfulness.

When children lie, they often cover their mouth as if to hide the words from you. Adults do the same thing. To try and mask the lie they will place their hand across their mouth or try to disguise this by coughing. A variation on this is scratching or stroking the nose with the lightest of touches. It is set apart from someone with an itchy nose who will touch their nose in a more deliberate manner. If however, you see this when you are speaking to someone, it may mean they think you are lying.

Open palms are a traditional sign of honesty, with palms facing upwards it shows the person has nothing to hide. This stems from when two people would show their palms on meeting, to show they weren't hiding any weapons. People generally find it difficult to lie with open palms and if they try, it will look contrived. The professional scam-artist will have learned to do this convincingly, to help him charm people into parting with their cash.

When someone is telling you a lie, they will often find it difficult to look you directly in the eye. To avoid eye contact they may rub their eyes. Men will rub their eyes briskly or look down when lying. Women are more likely to rub below their eyes or stare up whilst lying.

Prolonged eye contact may also be a clue to a lie. The liar may overcompensate because he knows a lack of eye contact can look suspicious. As with other possible symptoms this should be taken in context with other behaviour.

If you watch someone's eyes carefully you get clues to the way they are thinking. This can only be used as a general rule of thumb because everyone thinks in a different way so this won't apply to everybody. In my experience this does work most of the time, but you have to think carefully about what the person's thought process is when the eye movement takes place.

When someone looks up and to the left from your point of view (their right) they are constructing an image, in other words they are making up a situation in their mind, clearly this could mean they are lying. If they look left but their eye's stay level they are constructing a sound, for example they could be imagining a conversation that they haven't had.

When they look up and to the right they are remembering an image (probably not lying) and when they look right but keep their eye's level they are remembering a sound.

If someone looks down and to the left they are accessing their feelings and when they look down and to the right they are having an internal dialogue with themselves.

If someone says they were at a certain place at a certain time and you don't believe them you can always ask them a question about it. Better yet ask them a question that you know the answer to. But how would you know the answer if you yourself weren't there? You wouldn't, so ask about something you know didn't happen. For example, you could ask if they saw anything of a stabbing incident near where they were and were they stuck in the traffic because of the police investigation on the way there. If the person wasn't where they said, they will struggle to decide how to answer. If they agree with you that an incident took place then they must be lying, but if they didn't recall such an incident they may have been telling the truth.

When they give their answer, carefully notice how much they hesitate and stumble over their words. The more they struggle to answer, the more likely they are to be lying.

This is a really good way to find out if someone is lying as long as it was the location they were lying about and not the people they were with. You should also make sure that the incident is big enough so that they realistically could not have missed it if they had actually been there, but not so big that it is totally unbelievable.

One of the things that can manifest itself under the pressure of a lie, is an unusual expression on the face. What I mean by this is an expression that is shorter in duration than you would normally expect. In fact the expression can be so quick that it's easy to miss. However, it is an extremely effective method of uncovering a liar and so should always be looked for.

These short expressions commonly come in the form of a lifting of both eyebrows and/or a small frown in the middle of the forehead.

Such expressions intriguingly occurred during President Clinton's denial of sexual relations speech, and when Michael Jackson denied impropriety with a child. Both of these people were suspected of lying at the time and the use of this method would concur with that assumption.

The fact that such a politician was unable prevent such an expression could mean either they didn't know about such a give away, didn't think anyone would notice or more likely he was unable to stop the micro expression.

Unfortunately, the micro expression only lasts for a fraction of a second, so you need to practice carefully monitoring people's expressions for the clues they betray.

The easiest people to spot lying are the last people you want to lie to you. Your friends and family are the people you know best and therefore you know their patterns of behaviour. When they act in a slightly different way to normal your suspicions should be aroused.

The guilt of lying will manifest itself in many other ways. The person may sweat more making them adjust their clothing or scratch more. Their pupils may dilate and they will blink more often. Their face may blush or develop a twitch. When questioned they may be hesitant and give a short answer. A truthful person will be able to easy elaborate and be more animated in their answering. An untruthful story will lack details and will be vague in places.

People can learn to banish most of the unconscious movements that show untruthfulness. Politicians are good people to watch for this, they make sure they keep their movements to a minimum to appear credible.

You shouldn't assume someone is lying just because they fall down on one of the above tests, but if there are multiple clues this will remove all doubt for you. Ideally you should take everything into consideration before acting on your suspicions. The person may not be lying for the reason you think they are lying, for instance they may be lying out of embarrassment or perhaps they are planning a surprise for you. Just because you now know how to tell when someone is lying, make sure you don't get caught up in paranoia.