More scams from Africa

Pop-ups. You know what they are, and you know how to block most of them. But now, a country in Africa has managed to use them to scam you out of mucho dinero.

Jaime thought one of her kids had gotten ahold of the phone and started pushing numbers. But that wasn't the case at all. What actually happened was that pop-up ad automatically reconfigured her computer to dial into an Internet scam.

After that, every time she logged on to her dial up service she was charged nearly $7 a minute.

Make sure your firewalls are in good condition. And get pop-up blockers. Panicware has a free blocker that works decently, although not as good as the version you pay for. (obviously!)