Identity theft

With six months of earning, saving, and spending under your belt, you've got plenty of data to project how 2012 is going to play out. So let's lift the hood on your finances and give everything a good once over.

Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't be robbed. Identity thieves steal the personal information of about 2.4 million deceased Americans each year to apply for credit cards, cell phones and anything else requiring a credit check.

On Tuesday morning, my wife and I discovered our Chase Bank account had been hacked. By that afternoon, I realized we were part of something much bigger. But even a data breach that affected up to 1.5 million accounts is only the tip of the bank fraud iceberg.

When times are hard, fraud often gets worse. Americans are under great financial pressure, and there is no shortage of criminals waiting to take advantage of it. 24/7 Wall St. examined the 10 states that had the most per-capita fraud complaints.

Google built its empire on innovations that served consumers well, but it's building its future on serving those consumers, and their personal data, up to advertisers. Not only that, but Google's new focus has the company pursuing projects that may actually be harmful to users.

No one likes to hear that their bank, credit card issuer, transaction processor, or any of the merchants they've used who issue plastic has been hit with a security breach. But it happens: These are the steps to take afterward.

A data breach at a payments processing firm has potentially compromised credit and debit card information from all of the major card brands.

MasterCard and Visa said Friday that they had notified issuers of its credit cards of a potential breach of the security of customer accounts. Visa blamed a third company for the error.

The quantity of counterfeit goods entering the U.S. is increasing, and it gets worse around an event like the Super Bowl. Federal agents recently seized more than $6 million of counterfeits and shut down more than 300 illegal websites. But consumers are at risk for more than just getting a shoddy NFL jersey.

Valentine's Day offers Internet con artists a great cover for their illegal craft: Using love as a lure, scammers sweet-talk their victims out of personal information the can use to rob you. Here's what you need to know to avoid falling for a fraud.