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Hey there, Listeners. Happy Monday! It's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. You have likely recovered from the Thanksgiving weekend. We had Thanksgiving. We had Black Friday. We had Small Business Saturday. Today we're going to have Cyber Monday. If you are done and exhausted by all the splurging between the food and the gifts and the shopping, and you're looking for other ways to spend, you should consider maybe donating. Tomorrow is GivingTuesday, which always takes place on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. It is an event that launched in 2012 as a way for people to find ways to give their time and money to charitable causes. The idea is, spending all this money on your family or yourselves through all these different sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, GivingTuesday is that opportunity to give back to others. A recent report on GivingTuesday found that people donated nearly $2.5 billion in the US last year. So it's become a very big thing.

Although shopping and donating are obviously different practices and different ways to use your money, they do have one thing in common. They are prime targets for scammers. I write about this in a story that you can read on tech.usatoday.com: How to avoid scams when you're making donations on GivingTuesday.

A lot of the practices and processes that you see in shopping scams, you might get an email or a text or a phone call that is saying, Hey, there's this great deal here, or you can save money here, just click on this link and put in your info. The same practices apply to charitable causes, where scammers will pretend to be an organization that is soliciting donations, and especially during the holiday season, is obviously when it's the most common to see these types of scams.

There are fortunately ways that you can protect yourself, and a lot of the expert advice, is very similar to what you might see if you encounter a shopping scam. So here's what you should do if you come across an email, or text, or just any kind of correspondence asking you to donate money.

The first step and the first thing to know is, be wary if the organization asks for things like gift cards, or if they ask you to wire money, in some cases, even if they ask you directly for cash. In most of those cases, a lot of the bigger organizations don't come out that upfront and ask for that. They certainly will not ask you for gift cards or ask you to wire them money. So if you ever see any kind of message that suggests that, or someone's on the phone asking you, do you want to donate, just wire money, or get these gift cards? Just hang up, delete the email, delete the text message and move on.

The next step to take, is really take your time when choosing where to donate. There's no reason to rush. You might get messages that say donate now for like this great offer, or you might get some incredible perk for donating. You don't need to do that right away. The Better Business Bureau really advises people that responsible organizations are going to take whatever your donation is, whether you give it to them that day, tomorrow, in a week, there's no reason for you to hurry. GivingTuesday obviously is a great time to donate, but if you want to take your time before you decide the organization, take your time. There's absolutely no reason to hurry.

The third and final piece of advice, is do your research. That's probably the most important thing. A lot of organizations have their own websites. They share a lot of details like the mission, also some of the results they've achieved through their donations. So it's something to look at really closely before you make a donation. You can take it a step further too. The Better Business Bureau allows consumers to search organizations to determine how valid they are, if they're legit. The bureau also suggests visiting the website for the National Association of State Charity Officials. A lot of charities have to register in States before they can solicit, so you can look up a charity on that website. You can also go to the Internal Revenue Service. They have a website for tax-exempt organizations. So you can look up a charity there and just confirm that yes, they are real. They are tax-exempt. They are recognized by the IRS.

And in fact, one of the experts I talked to said, those two resources, the Better Business Bureau and the IRS, are great ways for folks to just double-check a charity organization and just make sure their money's going to the right place.

Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, show ideas? Do you plan to participate in GivingTuesday? Let me know on Twitter. I'm @brettmolina23.

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You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Giving Tuesday: Watch out for charity scams: Talking Tech podcast