RIP-OFF ALERT: The FTC has announced the largest-ever bust of telemarketers as part of its “Operation Tele-PHONEY.”

Here’s the scoop: Scammers were trying to sell people all kinds of things over the phone, from advance fee loans to big savings on Rx to magazine subscriptions to household products for seniors. Though they were many independent telemarketers, the common thread here is that they all sought to get your checking account information. Once they had it, they would bill you and try to empty out your account.

The banking industry continues to have zero security in place for drafts on your account. A legitimate person trying to cash a hardcopy check will be put through the ringer at bank. But if you just have an account number and present a draft, they’ll pay it no questions asked. This is a true Achilles’ heel that can easily be exploited by criminals.

The takeaway is simple: Never give out your check routing number over the phone or on the web. Pay via money order if you’re dealing with a collection agency. Sure, you may pay a nominal fee to do so, but this is the only truly safe way to settle up your debt.

President Bush will sign a bill to extend protection for those on the Do Not Call list. Telemarketers were poised to start dialing up millions who were just about to go off the registry, so the move is a timely one. So many people have registered for protection that those who haven't are just slammed with extra calls now. Now some telemarketers are even beginning to call cell phones.

If you haven't registered on the list, do it now. If you register and still get calls on your cell, the solicitors are either breaking the law or they may qualify for an exception that allows banks and brokerage houses to share your info among all their affiliates. When you set up new accounts of any kind, you should not give out your cell phone number. If you no longer have a landline, Clark recommends that you get a GrandCentral number, which is like a "fake" home number.

There's been an e-mail flying around the country again about the Do Not Call list and how cell phone users are supposedly about to have their names sold to marketers. Law enforcement has denied that this is true and Clark too wants to emphasize this is a false rumor. When it comes to the National Do Not Call Registry, you want to register your home phone number. Clark also thinks you should register your business number -- even though it's discouraged. That way you'll have full protection from solicitors. But the bogus e-mail that's been circulating shows that more and more people use their cell phones as their sole point of contact. This is a bad idea because marketers can sell it again and again if they get hold of it. If your only phone is your cell and you want to avoid annoying solicitation calls, try signing up at GrandCentral.com where you can get a "fake" home number. Special kudos to one listener who pointed out that GrandCentral is still being tested. At this point you must be invited to join by someone who already has an account. All others will be wait-listed until the service officially launches.

If you really want to annoy someone, call them up on their cell phone with a poll or survey for them to take. Unlike using a landline, people pay for their minutes when they receive incoming calls on the cell phone. So they don't want to talk to pollsters while the meter is running. Pollsters traditionally collect their data by landline, so they're having a real problem in the age of the mobile phone. One in seven people no longer have a home phone, and that number rises to about one in three for households with people up to the age of 30. A San Francisco Chronicle story that Clark read recently made the point that it's going to be very hard to have realistic polling data for the 2008 presidential race because of the popularity of the cell phone.

The unlikely impact that going mobile has had on politics isn't limited to skewing the results for pollsters. Cell phone-only homes are more likely to be Democrat than Republican, with 53 percent of the households identifying themselves as blue voters and 30 percent as red voters. And if in the future, home phones may die out all together, that's when polling will become really difficult. Already traditional call-out research in the radio and TV industries (where people in a given area are called and asked about their favorite artists, songs or shows to help compile playlists) is on the decline. So where is polling research headed? To the internet, of course, thanks to online surveys! There may even come a time when politicians have to go back to making decisions based on their gut, rather than what some survey or research tells them.

Have you heard of caller ID spoofing? People are able to make false numbers come up on your caller ID machine, fooling you into answering, according to Knight-Ridder. The equipment to do this costs very little money and it’s very easy to set up. Then, once you answer, they’ve got you on the phone and will try to sell you things. These spoof devices were available for law enforcement organizations only at first. But now the software is available on the Web for anyone. So, the number you see may not be the number calling. Beware!

Bill collectors are trying to make it legal for them to repeatedly call your cell phone to try and collect a debt. The justification is that people usually give a cell phone number as a contact when they hire a service or conduct business. This law is probably going to go through, so Clark has a suggestion for you. Many people no longer have a home phone number so they give out their cell phones. But there is a way to give out a home phone number that doesn’t cost you a thing. Lycos is offering free home phone numbers that are answerable through your computer. So, check it out and give companies that number instead. Also, if you’re being harassed by a bill collector, your greatest ally is your answering machine. Record these calls and tell the bill collector that because you are required to. And, you can be sure the collector will start to behave or just hang up all together when you tell them that. It is against the law for bill collectors to harass you, so don’t take it.

Clark hates getting spam, like most people do. He uses a free mail service that diverts spam mail into a “Bulk Mail” account, and it does a pretty good job. But about 10 percent of the mail coming into his regular Inbox is still spam. What if you were blind? Many blind people use vocal e-mail services that say the messages out loud. They hear all kinds of inappropriate messages, and they are starting to give up on e-mail. Clark is happy to report that the biggest players in the e-mail world are working together to stop spam at the source. Right now, we focus on stopping spam once they’ve already arrived in our Inbox. But we should be concentrating on preventing spam from arriving in the first place. In addition, the government has decided to stay out of a “Do Not Spam” list. Clark is glad to hear this. The “spamsters” are not going to abide by laws anyway, so establishing legislation would do nothing. Coordination in the industry is what we need. When it comes to the e-mail phishing scams in particular, Visa, the BBB and the federal government are all working together to stop this crime. During summer, our natural patterns are disrupted. For instance, we may go months without looking at our bank statements over the summer. If a criminal gets a hold of your account information through these phishing e-mails and 60 days go by without you reporting it, you lose the money forever. The bank does not have to give the money back. So, check those statements.

A new bill is working its way through Congress that sounds a lot better than it is. The “Junk Fax Protection Act of 2004” is a great-sounding name, right? You’d think the act would help prevent companies from sending you expensive, annoying junk faxes at your home or business. But, in reality, the law will make it legal to send you these junk faxes. The National Association of Realtors is leading the charge because they want to send you all the faxes they can. But other companies are not happy about the new law. One of the groups is the National Federation of Independent Business, which sells insurance services. The organization was sued for sending people junk faxes and lost in court, so now it has to pay a fine. Meanwhile, other companies are going to get away with sending these faxes with no penalty or punishment. We’ll see how this pans out, but it does not look good for businesses that receive faxes.