With consumers planning to spend more than $457 billion this holiday season (almost $800 each), according to the National Retail Federation, retailers are hoping to reap the financial rewards. Unfortunately, so are identity thieves.

As the amount of money we spend and the number of times we spend increases at this time of year, so too does the window of opportunity for would-be thieves. The increase in transactions not only means that thieves have more chances to steal your information, but they also have an easier time burying fraudulent transactions among all those legitimate transactions as well. If you are not careful, it can take months to discover the problem, and even longer to sort it all out.

There suggestions, appropriately tweaked, are valuable to small businesses. Small business owners shoppers, after all, shop for their business and can fall prey to the same problem. For that reason, it's important for them to know how to keep their information safe. Another reason to pay attention to these issues is that conveying them to customers will help build a bond and, hopefully, keep them coming back after the calendar changes.

So there, than, are five tips to help keep yourself safe this holiday season:

Select your card wisely. It you are like most people, you will pull out the plastic to make most of your holiday purchases this year. Two out of every three people will rely on either a credit card or debit card as their primary method of payment, according to the National Retail Federation. But which type of card you choose can make a huge difference. Credit cards, with their temptation to spend money that you don't have, and their infamously high interest rates, are definitely the biggest danger for some. But if you have the discipline to avoid overspending, credit cards usually provide the best protection against fraud and theft with less liability in case your information does get stolen. Increasingly popular rewards programs can also stretch your holiday budget when used correctly.

Protect your paper documents. While there has been much media attention to phishing, spyware, hackers and other forms of online fraud, the fact remains that 90% of cases where the method of obtaining the stolen information is known involve traditional 'offline' methods like 'dumpster diving' for receipts and bank statements or lost or stolen wallets. Over 50% of cases are 'friendly fraud' involving a family member, friend or other trusted associate, according to a study by Javelin Strategy and Research along with the Better Business Bureau.

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