Gone are the days when we can trust people all the time. I have just been scammed in an expensive way and this is to give you a heads-up. After restoring my system by my excellent computer repairman (who came over on a holiday), I thought I needed to put something out for all of you. I am not a dummy when it comes to computers and this totally tricked me to the tune of $59.95 which hopefully I can stop by being at the bank at its opening in the morning. I was typing away on e-mails Sunday after church. All of a sudden I get this full-screen message that my system was in peril - and it started running a scan. The scan looked & acted like the typical scan that my virus program uses. It showed 25 critical hacking attacks and my data was at risk. I was then taken to a page that only allowed me to do one thing - order the "full version" of the Microsoft program - for $59.95. I could not get to the web; my page would come up and in a millisecond the "virus program" screen appeared. Although I was told that I could proceed to another web site, it wouldn't let me. It had taken over my entire system. I tried to back out and go to the desktop (succesfully), but lo and behold my virus programs were disabled. Finally, in desperation - and stupidly so, I gave them my credit card information and ordered the program thinking this was a new way of hacking my system that my virus programs hadn't caught and the screen stated that it had been received and that the program was now taking care of and removing all the trojans, viruses, etc. I was to be sent an e-mail with the activation code - which of course never came. The 60-digit number I was instructed to write down - didn't work. My e-mail to support - never worked. So, I hooked up my old lap top and did a search for the program. Yes ... it was a trojan itself and difficult to remove. I shut the system down and this morning called SKCPR who does my computer work. He got it off rapidly .... he had expected it to be a lot worse. He indicated that this particular "company" has been hitting a LOT of computers; mine was far from the first. It can spread throughout one's system rapidly, but thankfully, I had shut down and it appears to have done no more damage. In the morning, I need to be at the bank at 8 with a letter of what happened and a print out of their site to see if they can, in their fraud department, stop the charge from going through. This is not meant as a "poor me" e-mail but informational. The name of the program is XP Total Security 2011. You can do a search for it on the web and see what they do and the thousands or more dollars they are raking in. As Michael Richey from SKCPR told me ... if you get a pop-up like this, don't send them money! Legit pop-ups don't do this. Be careful ... I should have checked the program out on my laptop first ... but I was trusting. Sandi Sandi's Puzzlers: http://www.gensoup.org/gorinpuzzles/index.php Sandi's site: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/