Have you ever locked yourself out of the house? Clark certainly has. Now new biometric deadbolts that read fingerprints can ensure it never has to happen again. Many of the big box hardware stores have these biometric locks for sale near the keys and traditional deadbolts.

Clark sees this as a safety no-brainer for women who routinely arrive home late at night by themselves. A fingerprint lock would prevent them from having to fumble around for keys in the dark.

Looking for a less high-tech option? Try a deadbolt that also has a combination lock built in. You can even give a trusted person their own unique code to gain entry.

As a bit of counterpoint to this whole discussion, Clark recently heard about a high-end Mercedes model in the Asian market that has a fingerprint ignition feature. Carjackers reportedly cut off the owner's finger to make off with the vehicle. Of course, that's something out of the realm of complete paranoia for most people in their everyday lives!

Plan to travel this holiday season yet still want to keep an eye on your home? Self-installed cameras can give you a look at your at a primary residence or vacation home when you're not there.

New technology allows cameras to webcast live video feeds so you can monitor your property remotely. Some people are even doing it from their hand-held smart phones, according to the Associated Press.

Do-it-yourself systems can be bought for about $330. Additional monitoring fees apply. By comparison, professional installation of a similar system can cost between $150-$600 and monthly monitoring fees can range from $15-$40.

In the past, Clark has discussed WiLife.com, a web-based monitoring system, which might present one option if you are interested.

Meanwhile, home burglaries are on the decline, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect during an economic downturn. So many people are unemployed at home that they've created ad hoc extensions of the local police force's eyes and ears on the street. Think of it as an informal neighborhood watch on steroids!

Clark has a little bit of egg on his face right now in light of his total enthusiasm for Google Voice. The celebrated free service is suffering some growing pains that you need to know about!

First, people have been upset that Google Voice is rationing who can come into the system. That means there is a waiting list for this no-fee service.

Second, some calls you try to place on Google Voice will be prohibited. The reasoning behind this has to do with an arcane topic known as competitive local exchange carriers.

Finally, one new hitch has emerged and it's a biggie. Certain voicemails handled by Google Voice were accidentially leaked online, making them available to anyone doing a simple Google search!

As our ClarkHoward.com users pointed out, however, these messages were typically marked as public by the user at the time of registration.

Still, this last gotcha has prompted a change in Google Voice policy. "We made a change to prevent these voicemails from being crawled so their content will not be indexed," a Google Voice spokesperson told PCMag.com.

Would you be in favor of police using technology to automatically scan license plates whenever a car enters or leaves a town?

That's the situation the residents of a relatively isolated San Francisco suburb called Tiburon could be facing. Authorities want to install cameras to scan each tag and automatically alert them if a match is found with an outstanding warrant.

What a change from the old days when an officer had to radio a dispatcher with a tag number to run through a database!

Police say the technology should make identifying burglary suspects much easier. "We'll look for a plate that came and went," the town's police chief tells The San Francisco Chronicle. "That's going to give us a very short list to work on."

What do you think? Be sure to vote in our poll and let us know!

License plates readers are becoming more widely used in Washington, D.C. -- partly due to the possibility of continued terrorist threats in our nation's capital. The Washington Post reports that some D.C. residents are upset with the cameras.

There's a fine line between privacy concerns and what's good for the society as a whole. For example, the use of license plate readers is a great help when it comes to getting the word out about AMBER alerts and missing children. That's if the abducting vehicle hasn't switched out its tag yet…

Britain is a society that's full of surveillance technology. Brits themselves are split over this "camera culture." If you think we have too many cameras here, you ain't seen nothing until you visit England!

Clark has previously discussed WiLife.com, a company that sells affordable cameras that are easily installed and can be monitored remotely via the Internet. The base system sells for around $200. Some business owners even use it to remotely monitor their shops.

Clark has long advised his listeners to be careful of employers spying on e-mails, text messages, instant messages and more. Now a new decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals rules that employers can only spy if the info is stored on one of their servers. If the info is hosted by a third party offsite somewhere, they don't have the legal right to snoop under this latest decision.

Employers will likely have new hires sign paperwork waiving their rights to electronic privacy to get around the decision. Existing employees may be asked to sign the same paperwork.

The reality is that most employers have keylogger programs and use artificial intelligence to look for keywords related to corporate espionage, sexual harassment or something else that could harm their bottom line. They're not usually spying to be nosy, though it all has a real creep-out factor to it.

Clark recalls when he once worked at a radio station where an employee was looking for another job and had been updating her resume on her work computer. When she was found out, she was called in and fired on the spot.

So be careful what you do at work. If you're working on equipment issued by your employer -- be it a PC, a laptop or a cell phone -- just be safe and assume they can have prying eyes.

Behavioral targeting for ads is all the rage these days among both online and traditional advertisers. When you're surfing around on your computer, a user profile can be easily built as you're tracked from site to site using cookies. Based on that profile, you can then be fed targeted ads.

The Washington Post reports that one marketer has fine-tuned this process to the point that they were able to identify 40,000 brides-to-be based on their visits to sites that had nothing to do with getting married. Of course, the surfers were then served ads related to their coming nuptials.

The feds are trying to decide if these practices violate your privacy. The ad agencies and advertisers obviously don't want you to have anonymity on the web.

The cable TV industry, meanwhile, has a new $150 million initiative in the works called Project Canoe. The goal of Project Canoe is to come up with ways to feed targeted commercials to your TV based on your show preferences. So the ad spots you'll see may be completely different than the ones your neighbor sees. The hope is that you won't TiVo past the ads because you'll actually be interested in them.

Clark believes there's a serious creep-out factor here! What do you think?

Clark often wishes he had a dollar for every time someone asked him about ZabaSearch.com, the website where you can search public records to locate a person. The info on the site is not always accurate or up to date, and Clark compares using ZabaSearch.com to being a private investigator tracking down leads.

Case in point: When executive producer Christa searched her name, she got a bunch of old addresses and also some listings for a woman who shares the same moniker in San Francisco.

Now ZabaSearch.com has spawned several imitators such as Wink.com and Spock.com. Clark isn't sharing this info to make you paranoid; he just wants you to be informed about the public info that may be out there about you.

Best Buy's Geek Squad is accused of spying on customers by digging through the hard drives of computers brought in for repair. This is not exactly a case of ID theft; at least one Geek Squad employee has fessed up to copying a woman's personal nude photos from her computer.

The message here is that you shouldn't be careless with your own info. This is especially important for teens that use popular social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Members of those sites usually list personal info -- date of birth, city and other specific identifiers -- that can greatly aid ID thieves.

Politicians have become particularly savvy at using the social-networking sites. Obama has done a great job reaching out to first-time voters. They're invited to join his MySpace page as virtual "friends." The politicians, of course, are ultimately seeking campaign money -- a more legitimate desire than an ID thief who also wants money but for a different reason.

If you're a parent, do you know if your child has a MySpace or Facebook page? Do you know who their virtual "friends" are or have any idea about what's on their page? One requirement should be that they make you one of their friends. You've got to know who they're virtually interacting with for their own good.

Today almost all businesses of mid to large size rely on cameras for surveillance. It's amazing how this sector of the loss-prevention industry has boomed. The cost to equip a store with camera equipment just 10 years ago was outrageous. But now the price has dropped drastically. Using the Internet, business owners can even monitor their cameras remotely from anywhere in the world. Even small businesses are poised to benefit from increasingly camera cheaper technology. AT&T is selling a system that costs around $200 for a single location. Internet monitoring for a single location will run you about $10 a month. That figure can go up to $40 for multiple locations.

Clark is one man who's used to being on camera -- whether it's during the course of his TV work or when he's in the studio for his radio show. Camera technology has become so cheap that there's an eye in the sky almost everywhere you look. In fact, the studio where Clark works even has spy cameras hidden in fake air vents! The days of cameras just being in retail stores to combat shrinkage are over. Small businesses can now buy inexpensive camera systems online. The Dallas Morning News reports that franchise owners use them to monitor activity remotely over the Internet. This is great for employers, but many folks are uncomfortable about giving up their privacy. Some New York taxi drivers recently went on strike because they objected to having to put GPS systems in their vehicles so riders could track their route. Meanwhile, truck drivers are now spied on in real-time by their employers via camera. England is one nation that spies on its citizens several times a day on public roads. The benefit to this was seen after the recent U.K. terror attacks. Police were able to instantly generate pictures thanks to all the camera technology. There's a fine line here between the invasion of individual privacy and the potential benefit for capitalism, according to Clark.

There's been an e-mail flying around the country again about the Do Not Call list and how cell phone users are supposedly about to have their names sold to marketers. Law enforcement has denied that this is true and Clark too wants to emphasize this is a false rumor. When it comes to the National Do Not Call Registry, you want to register your home phone number. Clark also thinks you should register your business number -- even though it's discouraged. That way you'll have full protection from solicitors. But the bogus e-mail that's been circulating shows that more and more people use their cell phones as their sole point of contact. This is a bad idea because marketers can sell it again and again if they get hold of it. If your only phone is your cell and you want to avoid annoying solicitation calls, try signing up at GrandCentral.com where you can get a "fake" home number. Special kudos to one listener who pointed out that GrandCentral is still being tested. At this point you must be invited to join by someone who already has an account. All others will be wait-listed until the service officially launches.

One of the capabilities of the Internet is to watch what happens at your home when you’re away or if you have a rental property. The idea has spread to retail stores where cameras monitor employees’ moves from up above. There are now even spy cameras that allow those watching to listen to conversations from miles away. The difference is that these cameras are hidden. Spy technology is not always a negative. These cameras can minimize “shrink” or employee theft and company owners love that. So get ready for more cameras – those you can see and those you can’t.

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In other video news, McDonald’s had started a campaign allowing people to tour its kitchens and see every aspect of the business if they wanted. It was called the “Open Doors” policy and it was going on in Europe. It won’t be coming to the States, though. Execs put a stop to the plan and now will offer a “virtual tour” instead.

Have you heard of RFID or Radio Frequency Identification? These are little transmitters that can go on inventory, follow travelers or be attached to children. When RFID first came out, privacy advocates were very worried about this technology. Clark didn’t think it would get out of hand. But he’s eating crow now because apparently a California school has been testing the use of RFID to track students. Teachers were having trouble figuring out which 7th and 8th graders were truants and which were legitimately missing school. The idea was that students would wear an RFID tag around their necks. But parents got very upset, and Clark agrees that this has become too obtrusive. Granted there are some good uses of RFID. For example, preventing shoplifting and aiding in the efficiency at checkout counters. But having RFID tags in the workplace and requiring people to wear them is too much.

You've probably seen people doing some unsanitary or unusual things while they're driving. It’s almost as if being in a car makes people feel invisible, even though others can observe us much more closely. Well, that invisible feeling is slowly going away, as cameras are being installed everywhere we look. According to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois is now using camera-equipped vans in construction zones. The vans tape drivers speeding through these zones even though the speed limit is reduced in these areas. Every year, we lose dozens of construction workers because people are driving way too fast. But the cameras will hopefully be a deterrent. A first time ticket will cost speeders $375. A second offense is $1,000 and a 90-day license suspension. That’s pretty serious. If they are used for safety, these cameras are a great asset.

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In other camera news, commercial drivers are also being tracked. GPS units are being placed in trucks, school buses and limousines to determine if these vehicles are where they should be. So, who is watching all of those cameras?

Every spring, Clark gets calls from people who have not filed taxes in years and are wondering if they are going to get caught. He always encourages people to come out of the cold and file. The IRS may not ever track you down, it’s true. But if they do, it will get really ugly for you. The chances of being found have also increased because of new data mining programs that the government is using. In California, for example, this new program found tons of people who didn’t file income taxes in 2002, according to the Wall Street Journal. Among the non-filers were 865 millionaires, nearly 7,000 lawyers and 1,500 accountants. These people are making significant money and some are even working in the tax field, but they think they are above the law. New Jersey shares its information with other states, and New York is working with the IRS to find people. If you owe the government money, they can retro tax you for as long as they like. If they owe you money, you lose it if you don’t claim it within three years. If you are hiding, Clark wants to give you fair warning. Offer yourself up and you will be fine. If you continue not to pay, you could become an example.