When thinking about all the retail shopping going on this time of year -- starting with the frenzy known as "Black Friday" a few weeks ago -- something rather important comes to mind.: What are some of the most important retail and personal security precautions that need to be taken around the holidays? With billions in commerce occurring and credit card receipts flowing like water all around us, the environment can be ripe for identity theft artists to ply their criminal trade, while the shoplifting crowd stuffs pockets and purses and pants and everything else with in-store stolen goods.

So I asked security firm SecurityMetrics a few questions in this area to see what the experts had to say. The Q&A is below...

1) What are the top three types of fraud seen around the holidays?
- Email phishing attempts where an attacker tries to obtain someone's credentials to steal their money online.
- Credit card theft where an attacker steals your credit card information from servers on the Internet you previously shopped at.
- Viruses that provide unauthorized access to your computer workstation.