Truth is, I haven’t seen much of a variety in cat and dog jewelry until I started shopping online. Sure, you will get a few, but animal jewelry is a niche kind of gift so your variety offline will be limited. And another truth… I haven’t seen such pieces as sold online that are so eye catching.

Easier to shop for friends and family overseas

Do you remember days when you used to send cards overseas on special occasions? Those days are gone for me. A card is nice, a gift much nicer. If you want to buy something from your country and send it overseas, it’s postage that burns a hole in your pocket. Now with so many businesses getting online, choose a local site to country you want to send you and your gift as well as your thoughts are on their way. As you see, it’s not difficult for consumer to see wide benefits of shopping online and these are my reasons for doing so. I have been sending online gifts for over five years now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © Gina Stathopoulos

Looking for a gift? Let Gina and Nick show you what we buy for friends/family and each other. At our site you will find popular gifts, gift information and stories from our readers. Come have a look http://www.we-recommend.com

The most infamous one at moment is so a called 'phishing' scam. In a nutshell it looks like this:

You get an email that looks like it was sent from your bank. They ask you to log in to your online account and verify some of your details. For your convenience, there is a link included right in email. All you have to do is click on it an log in. Don't ever!

The moment you click on that link and log in, scam artists have your login ID and password recorded. This will enable them to log in to your account and within hours, or days, your account will be cleaned out!.

There are two common-sense approaches to deal with this.

First, you have to realise that your bank already has all details they need to operate your online account. If they didn't, you wouldn't be able to open it in first place. So, you can most likely quite safely delete email and forget about it.

Secondly, if you have any doubts as to authenticity of email, you can get bank's phone number from your local phone book and give them a call. Tell them about email you received and ask if they tried to contact you. I bet they are going to be as surprised as you are.

And just remember: Whatever you do, never, ever, log in to your bank account, or any other sensitive account for that matter, right from an email. You already have login link somewhere in your records. If not, go to bank's main page and look for an online login page.

What we covered today is just one of things you need to do in order to protect yourself from identity fraud. There are many more. Lack of space doesn't allow me to cover more in this short article. You will find many more tips at http://www.credit-report-a-z.com/articles.html. They are free to implement and could save you lots of time and money.

Andrew Obremski is the owner of www.credit-report-a-z.com, a web site devoted to information about credit reports, identity theft, debt, and other personal finance topics.