To make sure your holiday season is merry and bright, the Privacy Gurus® would like to give you the gift of practical ways to protect yourself from criminals. Often the busy-ness of the season makes shoppers a little sloppy about taking care to protect their personal information, and unscrupulous bad guys can turn the most wonderful time of the year to the nightmare after Christmas for an unsuspecting victim of identity fraud or theft.

Follow these simple tips to take you out of the 'easy mark' category:

Guard your mail. Put outgoing bills in collection boxes (although you are encouraged to place your mail inside the post office – there have been many thefts of mail from collection boxes); promptly collect incoming mail and place holds on delivery when you are away. Don’t leave any outgoing or incoming mail locked in your car.

Put passwords on your financial accounts. Avoid consecutive numbers or easily obtainable information like your mother’s maiden name. Keep or shred your ATM receipts.

Limit the number of credit cards you carry. Carry just the ones you need. Limit identification information too. Photocopy the contents of your wallet and keep it in a safe place at home.

Pay attention to billing cycles. Identity thieves may take over an account and change the address to protect them. Stay vigilant – don’t get excited that you did not receive a bill; there may be a problem.

Shred, shred, shred. Or at least tear up charge receipts, insurance forms, and anything that has personally identifiable information on it.

Keep your Social Security card in a safe place. Do not carry it with you. Be assertive about not giving your Social Security Number out and using other types of identifiers whenever possible.

Do not volunteer personal information to merchants. No retail store needs your Social Security Number, phone number, address, or email address to transact a sale. If the cashier asks you for that information, you can simply decline or make something up.

Watch your credit card. There are devices that clerks can hide under their clothing to swipe your credit card number. If you see someone doing something with your credit card that is out of the ordinary, call a manager immediately!

Education begins at home in all facets. Privacy and information security are no exceptions. Give your child the information too so that they know how to stay aware and alert to protecting their precious identities while out enjoying the holiday season.

Be sure to contact your Privacy Gurus® with any questions about this topic and any other privacy and information security topic.

Darity Wesley is CEO and Legal Counsel for Privacy Solutions, Inc. a San Diego based consulting firm. Her team of Privacy Gurus® work with you to create policies and procedures to establish the expectation of privacy for your members, clients, customers, prospects, affiliates, associates, employees and vendors. You can reach her at (619)670-9462 or Darity@privacygurus.com