1. Don't hire someone without knowing who they are. 2. Be prepared to sue if it came to that. If you're US based and hiring US employees, you'll already have p

1. Don't hire someone without knowing who they are. 2. Be prepared to sue if it came to that. If you're US based and hiring US employees, you'll already have plenty of personal info available to be able to pay them, so you're unlikely to not know who they are. If you're hiring out contract workers via 1099s, this is part of the risk. Ways to lower this risk: - Meet in person before hiring. - Check references. - Check past work. Also, if what you're actually worried about is someone launching a competing service, unless they have resources to Marketing, Sales, and Operations, it's unlikely to be so trivial as to just stand up your source code and have a viable business. And if it is that easy, you're probably not making any money now anyway.