Telephone Nuisances

By now, everyone knows how to register their own telephone numbers in the National 'DoNotCall' registry ( http://www.donotcall.gov/ ) to get rid of those nagging calls in the evening and weekend from mortgage banks, phonecards etc. Note that the registry still does not save you from calls of charity organizations, but avoiding charity calls is easier than avoiding people trying to sell you interest-only mortgages or trying to extract your social security number.

But another common nuisance to do with telephone calls still exist. You may not even know it, if you do not check your phone bill with care. You may find in your telephone bill a hefty charge from nowhere for "collect calls", although your sharp memory tells you that you never accepted any such call.

What do you do? You call your local telephone company and they only ask you to contact that company (whose name may appear in you bill beside the charge for that collect call). You contact them and they say, "No way! You have to pay! Orrr ... Okay... We are giving a partial credit" .... as if they are doing you a favor.

Here is your solution: If you are unable to resolve your dispute, contact your local telephone company and ask confidently to offer you a "recourse adjustment". A recourse adjustment will remove those charges from your local telephone bill. However, the service provider company (who charged you those fictitious collect calls) may pursue collection of the charges directly from you. But hopefully they will not bother you because they know that the charge was fictitious in the first place. If they contact you - it's your turn to reject them! You may also complain to Better Business Bureau: http://www.bbb.org/.

Warning: Peanut Butter & Salmonella

The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to eat certain jars of Peter Pan or Great Value peanut butter because of the risk of contamination. The affected jars have a product code on the lid that begins with the number “2111.” The affected jars are made by ConAgra in a single facility in Sylvester, Ga., the FDA said. Great Value peanut butter made by other manufacturers is not affected, the agency said.

ConAgra is recalling all Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter beginning with product code 2111. The largest number of salmonella cases were reported in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee and Missouri. About 85% of the infected people said they ate peanut butter, CDC officials said.

Important links:

Full text of the FDA warning

To know more about Salmonella, visit the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention website.

Consumers who have questions should also contact ConAgra at 866-344-6970.

New Security Patches from Microsoft

Today Microsoft Corp. released its February set of security updates, including critical fixes for bugs in Office and the scanning engine used by the company's security products.

In total, 6 of Microsoft's 12 updates are rated as "critical," the other 6 have the less-serious rating of "important." Among the patches is a widely anticipated update for Microsoft Word, which fixes 6 bugs in Microsoft's word processing software. Hackers had been exploiting a number of these bugs in very targeted attacks over the past few months. The updates fix 20 bugs in total, including all 4 of the Word flaws that hackers had been exploiting. Other critical patches fix bugs in the ActiveX HTML Help control and Microsoft Data Access Components, both used by Windows, as well as flaws in Office (including Excel, PowerPoint) and Internet Explorer. Versions of these programs used on Windows 2000 and XP could have these loopholes.

The security software flaw is of particular concern because it could, in theory, be very easily exploited by an attacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's PC. "An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by constructing a specially crafted PDF File that could potentially allow remote code execution when the target computer system receives, and the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine scans, the PDF file," Microsoft said in its bulletin on the patch. Symantec rated this scanning engine flaw the most critical of the vulnerabilities patched on Tuesday.

Customers can download all the patches for free on Microsoft's security Web site www.microsoft.com/security and also can sign up to have them automatically delivered to their computers.

Alli: First OTC Diet Pill

The FDA issued its first ever approval for an over-the-counter (OTC) diet pill – Alli, the marketing name for the generic drug orlistat. It is a reduced strength version of the prescription drug Xenical.

Alli is expected to be available in stores nationwide by summer and the price, not yet final, is projected to be less than two dollars per day. It is only approved for those age 18 and older. The recommended dose of alli is one 60 mg capsule three times a day with meals containing fat. The FDA approval says, "the most common side effect of the product is a change in bowel habits, which may include loose stools. Eating a low fat diet will reduce the likelihood of this side effect."

Senior citizens and others with diabetes, thyroid disease or taking blood thinning medicine should consult with their physician before using it.

Taken at meal-time, alli works by blocking about 25% of the fat in the food. It must be used in conjunction with a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet containing about 15 grams of fat per meal. The GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare says it selected "alli" as the brand name because it conveys the concept of partnership with consumers in their weight-loss efforts. To help consumers get off to a successful start, the alli package will include Welcome and Companion Guides, a Guide to Healthy Eating, a Daily Journal, a Calorie and Fat Counter, Quick Fact Cards, and free access to an individualized online action plan at myalli.com to follow an "appealing, reduced-calorie, low-fat diet," says the company.