Gift Cards are great holiday gifts — assuming you purchase them from safe, trusted entities.

The Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois is warning against buying gift cards for restaurants or other retailers from places like social media or Craigslist.  C-E-O Steve Bernas says you need to look at the gift card you’re buying carefully.

Bernas said people need to look on the backs of the cards to make sure they’re not compromised in any way. He said last year, they received about 700 complaints and a lot of them came from cards that were compromised in some way.

Bernas says you can trust the integrity of a gift card from any retailer bearing the Better Businesses Bureau’s seal, or by simply buying the card from the retailer it will be used at.

In other State news:

As protesters continue to call for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation, it’s clear their issues with him go beyond the Laquan McDonald shooting.

While delivering thousands of petitions calling on Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to step down over their handling of McDonald case, activists like Richard Wallace of the Workers Center for Racial Justice had a long list of complaints against Emanuel, from displacing public housing residents to focusing city resources on the Loop business district to the detriment of African-American communities.

Wallace said Rahm Emanuel is completely involved in the process and said he’s part of the problem, adding Emanuel is finishing Daley’s work. Wallace also said Emanuel needs to be held accountable for that because they will continue to face those challenges until they can start talking about equality in forms of economic opportunity.

Wallace and national groups like MoveOn.org and Action Now say they collected more than 250,000 signatures calling for Emanuel and Alvarez, but the groups admit most of the people who signed the petitions don’t live in Chicago.