Imagine losing your Gmail, Twitter, Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) accounts in just one hour. That's what happened to Wired.com senior writer Mat Honan last August. He lost eight years worth of data and tells the tale in the cover story of Wired magazine's December issue.

If this nightmare could happen to an editor at a leading tech publication, what are the odds it could happen to you? It's a sobering question during this holiday season when many of us will be shopping online more than usual.

Related: The Dark Side to Record-Breaking Black Friday

Mat Honan tells The Daily Ticker that most people don't have to worry about online shopping but he warns that there are an "alarming" number of "password leaks."

Honan says passwords now ought to be just one tool in a security arsenal, "not the entire arsenal."

Passwords, coupled with usernames, are the primary way people access their online accounts and protect those accounts from hackers. But Honan says no matter how complex or unique

In recent months, consumer confidence has risen as the unemployment rate has come down and the housing recovery builds momentum. This weekend's strong start to the holiday shopping season is another sign of an economy that's doing much better than feared.

Related: Black Friday Weekend by the Numbers

But the recession never ended for millions of Americans and many of them now face a frightening prospect: the loss of unemployment benefits.

"More than 40% of the nearly five million Americans who receive unemployment insurance are set to lose those benefits if federal programs expire as scheduled at year-end," The WSJ reports. "Already this year, hundreds of thousands of people have exhausted their jobless benefits. Now, virtually everyone left in the federal programs would lose their benefits if the programs expire as scheduled at year-end."

The roughly 2.1 million Americans at risk are currently receiving benefits through federally backed programs that Congress approved starting in

Retailers reported $59.1 billion in sales this Black Friday weekend, up 13% from a year ago. But the jump was smaller than the 16% increase in sales in 2011. A number of big retailers including Wal-Mart (WMT), Target (TGT) and Toys "R" Us opened their doors Thursday evening, which analysts say affected Black Friday sales figures.

Related: Top Black Friday Myths Debunked

"Overall it was a good start to the holiday season," says The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task, but "Black Friday matters even less now" than before. For one thing, says Task, Thursday night sales at stores that were open may have reduced sales on Friday. Online sales topped $1 billion on Friday, according to research firm comScore.

Related: Black Friday Weekend by the Numbers

Historically, retailers and shoppers saw Black Friday sales numbers as a harbinger of what to expect for the full holiday shopping season, but that's not necessarily the case anymore.

"Based on the charts that I have seen, all the obsession with what

Ask any non-partisan economist how this country can begin to address its debt and deficit problem, and the answer is "raise taxes and cut spending."

Not raise taxes OR cut spending.

Raise taxes AND cut spending.

With the federal government currently spending about 22% of GDP per year and taxes pulling in only 17% of GDP, there's simply no way we can get the deficit under control just by cutting spending or raising taxes unless we crush the economy in the process.

On the spending side, the big long-term problems are the social and healthcare programs, so the attention should be focused there. Defense spending is also massive and can likely be trimmed without compromising the country's security.

On the tax side, meanwhile, the obvious place to look for potential increases is the place where taxes are relatively low. And one of those places is the tax rates that mostly benefit the highest-earning Americans--top-bracket income taxes, capital gains taxes, and dividend taxes.

The only

Another Apple bull has jumped ship.

Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion Analytics, has been reducing his clients' positions in Apple (AAPL) since October and has even advised them to cut exposure to the tech giant by at least a third in their personal portfolios. The stock has reversed its downward slide in the past week but is still off about 14% in three months and nearly 20% from its September high. In comparison, the Nasdaq Composite Index (IXIC) is down 3.3% in three months and the S&P 500 Index (GSPC) is flat.

Related: Apple Backlash Hits Critical Mass But "Cheap" Stock Stuck in Limbo

Ritholtz says the stock's precipitous fall has less to do with the recent complaints surrounding Apple products — specifically its highly criticized Maps app, which forced Apple CEO Tim Cook to apologize to consumers and investors in an open letter on the company's Web site — and more to do with dismal third-quarter earnings. Many investors and hedge funds are trying to lock in gains before the end of

Nick D'Aloisio did not have a typical 17^th birthday: instead of celebrating with friends and family, he was busy launching the second edition of his popular iPhone app, Summly. While most 17-year-olds are worried about SATs and prom, D'Aloisio has kept busy by creating a news summarization app with over $1 million in financial backing.

Summly uses an algorithm to summarize news stories from the largest news organizations. The summaries are designed to fit a mobile screen perfectly.

"We worked very hard to create the user interface," D'Aloisio tells The Daily Ticker, "but equally, the technology is very robust…we've hired the best people in the world to create this algorithm that can take any news article, determine whether or not it's summarizable, and then produce a coherent paragraph of text automatically with no human intervention that's very scalable."

When D'Aloisio says he's hired the best people for the job, he isn't exaggerating. Summly works closely with SRI International to

Clint Greenleaf was going to be a marine.

He studied accounting in college but planned on fighting for our country upon graduation. Those plans were put on hold when Greenleaf tore his shoulder and was no longer able to train or fight.

"I did not have a very good GPA and wasn't doing a good job in the day-to-day accounting part of my life, but I was applying to jobs at accounting firms," Greenleaf tells The Daily Ticker. "My friends all said you're probably not going to get a job. I went to the interviews, and I tied my tie and shined my shoes and said yes sir, no sir, made sure I was polite and acted like I would belong well in an accounting firm."

The lessons Greenleaf learned from his marine training -- the importance of manners and appearance -- translated into job interviews. He applied to six major accounting firms and was offered a job at each one.

"So there was this idea that, 'wow maybe politeness does work,'" says Greenleaf.

Friends who were interviewing for jobs started

Jim Rickards has a message for investors and politicians monitoring talks between Congress and the White House to avoid billions of dollars worth of spending cuts and take hikes set to take effect January 1: Be careful what you wish for.

"There are only bad outcomes," says Rickards, a partner at JAC Capital Advisors. "Taxes are going up no matter what. It's just a question about whether they go up for everybody [failure to agree] or target certain people [agreement]. Either way you're talking about a tax increase in the middle of a depression."

Related: Fiscal Cliff: Congress Will Come to a 'Reasonable Agreement' By Year-End, Says David Walker

Rickards says Republicans, who have so far opposed any tax increases, will eventually agree to higher taxes for the wealthy. "They've learned their lesson" from being bashed continually on their recent position, he says.

Politico, however, reported late Thursday that talks between the White House and senior Republican Congressional staffers got