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Clark recently received a postcard in the mail from an "award verification center," which trumpeted that he won a guaranteed prize. The prizing included his choice of either a couple of cars valued at $49,000; a massive shopping spree; a luxurious vacation; or a cash award.

But when he looked closely at the postcard, he noticed the words "commercial solicitation" printed in very small type.

In order to redeem his "prize," Clark needed to call the verification center within 3 days. They would then arrange for him to receive his prize on the day of his visit. Therein lay the key. This was obviously a solicitation for selling a timeshare or something similar.

Needless to say, Clark didn't call. So when you get a similar solicitation, do not bite. Throw it away.

Over the last few weeks, we've received hundreds of calls from people who wonder whether they should ditch their old gas-guzzling SUV/truck and buy a newer fuel-efficient vehicle to save money.

Clark usually says that it doesn't make sense to do so. But that's just general advice without looking at the numbers.

If you want to get really granular, Smart Money has a new interactive tool that features 11 variable fields where you can enter your trade-in value, gas mileage, daily driving distance, etc. The tool calculates how long it takes to start getting payback.

You may not like the answer you get. Sometimes the only way to make it work is to buy a used gas-sipper. In this respect, cars from Hyundai and Kia tend to depreciate much quicker than those from Honda and Toyota.

And if you're stumped on your trade-in value, know that Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book and others haven't stayed current with SUV/truck values. So deduct about 25% from whatever they say.

Clark was recently disturbed to learn that your personal info can float out in cyberspace long after you think it has been removed. This is because of caching issues.

Search engines send spiders out across the web to find info that's stored on servers all over the world. Then they present that info to you during a web search.

But the spiders only crawl certain parts of the web every few days or weeks. So info can be stored or "cached" in cyberspace even after it's gone from the original server. In most cases, there will be a lag before it disappears completely.

When it comes to browser security, Clark uses a free tool available at Finjan.com. It prevents him from going to mistyped addresses where danger may lurk, and it goes beyond just looking at URLs to look at the actual code on a page.

Meanwhile, here's one low-tech suggestion to beat keyloggers. A keylogger is a program that gets secretly installed on your computer when you visit bogus websites. It can be used to track every keystroke you make and steal valuable passwords.

This trick involves typing passwords out of order or adding extra characters that you goes back and erases before logging on. Say for example your password is "jane." Instead of typing "j-a-n-e," try typing something like "j-a-x-n-x-e." Then go back and manually erase the extra characters (the x's) using your mouse, not the keyboard, and you just may trick someone who may be remotely monitoring your keystrokes!

Brazil has long won praise from Clark for their energy independence thanks to native sugar. Virtually all their cars can run on sugar or gas or a combination of both. They also have had huge discoveries of oil as of late. In an ironic twist, Brazil may even join OPEC in the future because of their vast quantities!

The neighboring country of Colombia, meanwhile, also gets its gas from sugar. But where they're really leading the charge is with bio-diesel. Colombia uses palm oil, yucca, sugar beets and rapeseed oil to efficiently create diesel.

McCain and Obama have both been clear about the need for a new national energy policy with alternatives. This is not pie in the sky stuff, folks. Just look at our Southern hemisphere neighbors.

That being said, it's a kick in the teeth to our allies in Brazil that our Congress charges a 54-cent/gallon tariff for Brazilian-made energy. Meanwhile, American consumers are being held over a barrel of oil at the pump. Moreover, OPEC doesn't face any tariff whatsoever to send us oil. What is Congress thinking?

Other countries are getting it together on energy. Why not us?