By now I hope most people know not to fall victim to those bogus emails from some unknown prince in a far of land who needs your help getting some large sum of money out of his country and only you can help… You know the email I mean, right? And you know it’s bogus, right? Of course you do.

Unfortunately, not all scams are as blatantly obvious. In fact, some crafty thieves even disguise their ruse in the form of a charitable organization. Duping well-intentioned people into donating money to a fake charity has to be about as low as you can go, if you ask me. (Shame on you bad people of the world!)

Just like you should be wary of door-to-door solicitors who arrive unannounced asking for money for their cause, you should be wary of strange emails that come with requests for donations.

Here are a few tips for donating to your favorite causes safely.

• Research – Not familiar with the charitable organization? Ask questions and do your homework. Did you know that all charities must be registered with the state? It’s true, check it out.
• Look for Security – Whenever you make money transactions online, make sure you see the “s” as in “https.” The “s” stands for secure and means your information is safe. You don’t want any bad guys stealing your info while you make a donation.
• Ask for a Receipt - Not only does it provide you with proof for your taxes, but it also provides a paper trail, just in case.
• Donate from Home – Open WiFi hotspots are great for doing generic web surfing, but when it comes to giving out your credit card info, it’s safer to do it from home (from a secure network, of course.)
• Trust Your Gut – Still feel like something is hinky? Don’t do it. There will be other organizations on other days that need your assistance, wait for one that makes you feel secure.

There are many wonderful organizations in need of assistance online and in person, you just have to take precautions to make sure your money is going where you think it is.

October is National CyberSecurity Awareness Month and National Crime Prevention Month. Get more tips about how to protect your identity on and offline by following LifeLock on Facebook and Twitter.

To help you get started with holiday donations, this month five LifeLock for Life Sweepstakes winners will win a $100 donation to the charity of their choice and one grand prize winner will receive a $1,000 donation to the charity of their choice. Plus when you play to win, you will learn more about staying safe while making donations online. Good luck!

This is a partnered post as a LifeLock Ambassador. However all opinions are my own.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of LifeLock Facebook for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

It seems like every website I visit requires a password these days. It can be tough keeping up with different passwords for all of those accounts, but what would be even tougher would be dealing with the fallout if my accounts were ever hacked and my personal information stolen. In this digital age, access to our entire lives and financial well-being is just a few keystrokes away. For bad guys, that means a wealth of information to do bad. For you, that means being ever vigilant with access to your accounts, cryptic passwords and monitoring your digital identity to keep the bad guys at bay.

My husband has long emphasized the use of crazy complicated passwords. With a combination of letters, numbers and special characters we take great care in creating challenging passwords that I can (hopefully) remember. Why go to such lengths?  Because for every character and special character you add to your password, the harder it makes for hackers to get through.

How hack friendly is your password?

• If you have 6 characters in your password with no symbol, it takes a professional only .000224 seconds to crack your password
• If you have 10 characters and one symbol in your password, it takes up to 20 days for a professional to crack your password

Yet there are many people who still use these Top 10 Most Common Passwords.

I hope that you don’t secretly realize your password is in the Top 10. If it is, please take a moment to change it now. It could help protect you from being among these staggering statistics:

• The average cost per person of having identities stolen is $1,513
• 11.6 million adults were victims of identity fraud in 2011 and a total of $18 billion was lost
• 6.6% of victims are smartphone owners
• 6.8% of victims are social media users who click on applications
• 8.2% of victims are social media users who have “checked in” using their smartphone GPS
• 10.1% of victims are LinkedIn users

Cryptic passwords are only the first line of protection from hackers. The only way to quickly know that there has been a breach in your security is to monitor your accounts and identity 24/7. For those who don’t have the time to do that ourselves (isn’t that all of us) LifeLock is an identity protection service that you can put to the task of monitoring your identity 24/7. The service monitors, scans, responds, guarantees and tracks your identity and credit score to make sure you are the first to know if there is ever a breach.

Don’t fall victim to a hacker. Change your passwords frequently with a set of letters, numbers and special characters. And don’t use the same password for every account. For more information about adding LifeLock as an additional level of protection follow LifeLock on Facebook.