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RIP-OFF ALERT: Here's a warning about a fast-growing type of identity theft called third level or third-tier identity theft. The speed and sophistication with which it takes place is shocking.

Let's say you go to a health club or a movie theater -- some place where you will be away from your car for a fairly predictable amount of time. Crooks are targeting these parking lots with the intent of breaking into multiple cars in a short time period.

Once they've snatched purses, a criminal ring will use a "runner" who takes one person's license and another person's checkbook. The runner writes out a check to the licensee and then attempts to cash it using the license as identification.

The really scary thing is that the leaders of these criminal rings have Rolodexes of runners who can bear a physical similarity to just about anybody in a pinch. Many of them are paid in drugs, according to The Washington Post.

Surveillance cameras at the banks won't be of much help. After all, the runner resembles the person in the license who they're claiming to be. When the police eventually look at the license that was used, they go to arrest the wrong person.

There are so many important takeaways in this warning.

First, do not carry your checkbook on your person or in your car. Leave it at home, because if it gets lost or stolen, you're opening yourself to the worst form of economic identify theft.

Second, if you must leave your pocketbook in the car, be sure to lock it in your trunk before you get where you're going. Crooks often watch people with binoculars in a targeted parking lot and will notice if you stash something in the trunk.

Third, go through your wallet or purse and see what you may be carrying that you really don't need. Remove any form of identification that's redundant. Remember, the best protection is prevention.

Requiring drivers to use headsets when talking on their cells has no demonstrable impact on the number of crashes, according to new findings from the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI).

As an affiliate of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, the HLDI had long been an advocate of "hands-free" laws in a number of states that outlawed simply talking on your phone with it glued to your ear. So you can imagine the organization's chagrin when they didn't see a drop in accidents in those states.

Adrian Lund, president of the HLDI was quoted by The New York Times as simply stating, "We were very surprised."

The other infuriating angle here is that if you got a ticket for yapping on your cell phone, all you did was fatten the state's coffers!

Clark's belief is that using a cell phone while driving is inherently distracting -- no matter if you're holding it to your ear, using the speaker phone function or using a headset. Perhaps the HLDI should investigate the dangers of strictly being on a call vs. not being on a call.

"Our real problem is to do something about the bigger problem of distracted driving," Lund says, "whether that's cellphones, whether that's the baby crying in the back seat, whether it's the CD you dropped on the floor, whatever it is."

Remember, always keep your eyes on the road. Clark has had to teach his 4-year-old son that he can't turn around when he's driving -- no matter what the emergency is -- until they've come to a complete stop.

How 'bout dem Saints? The "Aints" ain't the "Aints" anymore!

Clark admits to being a lifelong Colts fan going back to the days when they were a Baltimore franchise. But he found himself getting really excited for the New Orleans champs in the latter part of the Super Bowl. After all, the Crescent City is one that's had a long road of suffering after Hurricane Katrina.

Sure, Saints QB Drew Brees was named MVP, but Clark would have picked field-goal kicker Garrett Hartley as MVP. He's the young fellow who kept making those impossibly long clutch kicks.

As always, so many people are talking about the Super Bowl ads. However, the penny-pincher hasn't seen them yet.

He recorded the game on DVR and went out to dinner with his family, where they were one of only two tables in the whole establishment. The entire waitstaff was watching the game in the bar area and Clark was blissfully unaware of what was going on. Later that evening, he skipped through the halftime show and the ads.

Clark's staffers, by contrast, enjoyed both the ads and the game. Senior producer Kim liked the Monster.com ad with the beaver doing some amazing violin work. Associate producer Joel liked the Doritos ad where the man got a Dorito thrown at his neck. Executive producer Christa, meanwhile, liked Google's ad that captured an entire story in 30 seconds with no spoken words, just Google searches.

But for Clark, it's all about the football. We're only four-and-a-half months away from the start of training camp!

CLARKONOMICS: Just days ago, Clark shared news that many people are beginning to feel more confidence about the economy and their own situations. Yet at the same time, people with money in the stock market have been more nervous lately as the Dow dances at, above and below 10,000.

Where exactly is the worry coming from? There's concern about the PIGS -- Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain -- and the fiscal hot water they're in. Greece is running huge budget deficits, and Spain's unemployment is over 20 percent right now.

That has created worry about the possibility of bailouts for entire European countries -- not just individual banks.

Here in the United States, we are beginning to see signs of a recovery, though jobs are still far from abundant. So the worry about the other shoe dropping now centers on PIGS.

Yet Clark sees more reasons for optimism than pessimism. Considering what we've been through, we're in better shape than he might have expected.

If you are a stock investor, it's important to remember your horizons. It's too risky to be in the stock market if you need your money in the next year or two. Yet if you won't need it until retirement in 20 or 30 years, there's no reason to be unnecessarily cautious.