Tina Tran reports on AzFamily.com on student credit card indebtedness.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed SpoofGuard, a browser-based toolbar to prevent successful phishing attacks.

SpoofGuard is a browser plug in that is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explore. SpoofGuard places a traffic light in your browser toolbar that turns from green to yellow to red as you navigate to a spoof site. If you try to enter sensitive information into a form from a spoof site, SpoofGuard will save your data and warn you. SpoofGuard warnings occur when alarm indicators reach a level that depends on parameters that are set by the user.

A white paper describing SpoofGuard is available for download.

Another Stanford effort is targeted at user tendencies to use a common password across multiple sites. Web Password Hashing provides a client side solution to hashing the user's password with the domain name of the web site to create a unique password specific to that site. A PowerPoint presentation on this technique is available for download.

Quicken.com carries a Dow Jones news story on the rapid growth expected this year in spending on prepaid healthcare cards.

Stephanie AuWerter writes in SmartMoney about credit card debt and current card issuer practices with respect to fees, adjusting interest rates, etc.

Does it seem as if you can trigger those penalties just by breathing these days? You aren't far off: Over the past few years, credit-card companies have become increasingly dependent on the fees they charge users. In 2001, fee income represented 28% of credit-card companies' total income, according to CardWeb.com. Over the past five years, this figure has increased by 172%.

The US National Cyber Alert System (US-CERT) is making its alerts available both by email and RSS subscriptions.