By IVAN PENN, St. Petersburg Times

Everyone loves to collect the Benjamins. But are those $100 bills real?

Sharpie, the maker of the popular markers, wants consumers to check the bills out for themselves. So the maker of Counterfeit Detector Markers that store clerks use to check your money has made the pens available for consumers to check the bills themselves.

Imagine a Web site that publishes personal information about you, including address, spouse, credit score, phone numbers, photos -- all without your knowledge.

About a week ago, a friend sent a warning on Facebook about such a site, called Spokeo (www.spokeo.com). A flurry of responses followed with a bunch of comments, simply stating, "scary."

Along with the growing concern about financial identity theft is rising anxiety about the pilfering of your medical identity.

Nothing separates the white hats from the black hats like disaster.

There are those whose hearts go out to the victims and those who seek to capitalize on the losses and inevitable outpouring of support.

Do cell phones cause brain tumors? Does a wire bra cause breast tumors to develop?

Consumers have been a bit frenzied of late as new studies about cell phones and cancer emerged over the past few weeks, and as Congress held hearings in recent days on the issue. This followed a blog discussion earlier this summer about the effects of wire bras on the risk of breast cancer.

Get ready for TV Everywhere.

Cable providers such as Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon soon will offer consumers the ability to access cable programming over the Internet, with a username and password.

The program is being tested now with a limited number of households and is expected to be rolled out nationally before the end of the year.

Can't afford to buy a Gucci or Louis Vuitton bag you so desperately want for an event that could close a multimillion-dollar deal?

How about the perfect pair of shoes to match the dress you plan to wear for a red-carpet event -- a pair you'll probably never wear again?

Here's a book with good timing: "Good Housekeeping's Good Deals & Smart Steals: How to Save Money on Everything". With the economy taking a nose dive, Good Housekeeping has packaged countless tips into a handy pocket-sized book to help consumers save some of their rapidly disappearing dollars and better protect their products and the environment. Cost: $9.95.

With little talk about the pet food crisis of a year and a half ago, it would seem that the issue was all but gone.But Debbie Cmar, an Oldsmar, Fla. resident who spent well over $10,000 trying to save her cats, got a reminder this week. Her third cat, Libby, an 8-year-old domestic long hair, died earlier this month because of contaminated pet food.