We save money

In many cases by preferring to buy my gifts online, I’ve seen great savings. Many factors combine so that we shoppers win. The competition, fact that merchants don’t have same overheads as offline, and of course, from which country you are shopping from and how strong your country’s currency is.

We save time

These days we work longer hours. The time that we do have to ourselves is very precious. Buying online gifts saves me a lot of time. With all birthdays I have to shop for and for special occasions it makes my life so much easier.

We have such a large variety of gifts

Where shops in your area may store some items, online gifts you can find quantity, quality and variety. A good example is nautical jewelry. If you are a big fan like I am, you can find pieces created in such different designs that you won’t run out of choices. Looking for flowers? or Gift baskets? Same thing. Shop online and choose. The choice is there.

Designers unleash their creativity to give us more

According to recent studies, up to 7,000,000 people become identity theft victims each year, in United States alone. That's over 19,000 cases a day, or 799 cases an hour. Whichever way you look at it, these are shocking figures. And with more and more people using Internet, online banking, and other hi-tech services, things aren't likely to improve any time soon.

In fact, another research, a survey conducted on behalf of Federal Trade Commission recently, tells us that situation is even worse. According to FTC survey report, 4.6% of US population were identity fraud victims last year - that's 10 million people.

According to FTC figures, if someone fraudulently opens a new credit card or another loan account under your name, on average you can expect dollar amount to go to about $10,200. That's just an average amount.

To clean up your name, and your credit rating, you will need to deal with this experience. You can expect to spend between $500 and $1,200 of your own hard-earned money cleaning up mess. You can also expect to invest between 30 and 60 hours of your time.

The above figures are just cold statistics. They say nothing about emotional trauma, through which you are likely to go when it happens to you. It's all very well to read and hear about bad things that happen to other people. It is quite different when same thing happens to you, or your loved one.

Is there anything you can do in order to protect yourself? There is. Quite a bit actually. It's all based on common sense and, while there are no guarantees in life, you will minimise risk and make life of an identity thief a lot harder.

Funny thing about thieves. They don't like working hard. If you make it hard enough for them, they will usually go away - to find an easier target.