Beware Post-Holiday Phishing By Gregg Keizer Courtesy of TechWeb News Fraudsters will be busy in the post-holiday weeks, a security firm warned Thursday, and consumers should be especially watchful for bogus "get out of debt" phishing pitches. "Every year during the holidays, a high percentage of consumers find themselves spending a little more than anticipated, and then begin to panic," said Jordan Ritter, chief technology officer of Cloudmark, in a statement. "A phishing offer posing as your bank and offering to consolidate your credit card debt under one easy, low-rate card might be especially tempting now."

HI DOUG, Thanks for the warning again and for watching out for us in Adland! God bless! Carla

Doug, Thanks for the warning. While I would never go for a pitch like that, I can certainly see that many would. One of my businesses is about managing your money and eliminating your debt, and I can tell you that consolidating is the first thing anyone thinks of, even though it may not be the best thing or even the right thing to do. The methodology we use actually works better and faster if you don't consolidate, in fact. On a related subject, I have a very annoying message popping up every time I get on the internet. I'm sure it's a scam, but I don't know how to get rid of it. It's a noisy pop-up window that says my trial period for some movie download site is over with, and because I didn't cancel in time, I now owe $29.95. I didn't subscribe to any such thing. When I go to the FAQs and click on that, a message comes up that I'm responsible for whatever happens on my computer, and pay up. It "graciously" offers me the one-time opportunity to pay $29.95 to make them go away. Naturally they want my credit card number. We've run Ad-Aware, Spybot and McAffee VirusScan without being able to get rid of it. I just have to shut it down in Task Manager every time. I'm ready to kill somebody, if I only knew who to throttle with my bare hands, lol. Any suggestions? Cheri

Cheri, It sounds like its in the Registry. What is the product its pushing ? Are you using IE ? You could get WinPatrol and Stop it with that, or Startup Monitor.

Doug, Yes, using IE. It's pushing some sort of monthly subscription to a site where you can download movies. Something I saw while trying to figure it out leads me to believe it may be adult movies. Do you provide either of the programs you recommend on your site? Will either of them prevent malware from hijacking my home page? We've had to fix that problem several times. I'd be glad to purchase a reasonably-priced product that would fix this and prevent that at the same time. Cheri