The holiday shopping season is around the corner. Many are wondering if their purchases are secure this time around.

In 2013, Target and Neiman Marcus reported major security breaches at their stores. Shoppers are concerned.

“You saw what happened with Home Depot and those places last year,” shopper Ingrid Banner said. “It can easily happen to anybody.”

According to John Joyce with the Secret Service, holidays are not a target time for major breaches.

“The agency has not seen that there’s any type of a spike of credit card fraud during the holidays,” Joyce said. “It’s a 365 (-day), 24/7 crime that takes place year-round.”

Items like credit card skimmers are tools of the trade for local criminals. But investigators say suspects for major breaches are often overseas.

“They’re able to hack into the larger corporations here to steal either personal information or credit card information, and they’ll take that information and sell it on the black market,” said Joyce.

If hackers get your credit card number in a major breach and sell it on the black market, there’s no guarantee that someone will use it right away. Joyce said you need to keep your guard up – all the time.

“Like with the Target breach, people will check their accounts on a regular basis to start with and then after a month or two they’ll determine ‘Well, I haven’t seen anything wrong, so I guess I’m OK,’” Joyce said.

It’s also a good idea to use credit cards as opposed to debit cards.

“If you dispute that charge, they’ll take that charge off your credit card bill,” Joyce said. “Where, with your debit card, that money is coming directly out of your account.”