Last week's column on Kiva and charities proved popular. So this week we're going to continue the theme, starting with the U.S. Citizens' Association's Web site and its commercials on cable TV.

Once you see either, it won't take long to figure out where the association's politics lie. But regardless of political persuasion -- and this association proudly proclaims the Wall Street Journal, not what you'd call a pillar of the liberal media, rejected its print ads -- spend a few minutes on its site, using the tools we've talked about in this column.

We'll try to persuade you there are worthier places to spend your charity dollars, and raise some questions you should ask about any non-profit you plan to give your money or time.

The online micro-finance charity Web site Kiva rose to be a shining non-profit success story in the recession years. It marries the trendiness of social entrepreneurship with an almost perfect combination of online applications. If you haven't used the site before (and, full disclosure, I've been donating above-average amounts for about a year), try it.

It's hard not to be fascinated and compelled by the hundreds of people in mostly developing countries (U.S. candidates were added this year) telling their stories, asking for not much more of an investment in their business than we fat Americans spend on lunch at Subway. I've made loans to budding clothing sellers in Mongolia and Tajikistan; a struggling restaurateur in Cambodia; and a nascent women's' transportation cooperative in Pakistan. One borrower, a young man from Ukraine with a wife and child who wanted to expand his cab company, actually paid me back in full. I took the money and gave it to another entrepreneur. It's quite a feeling to personalize charity in this way. And from a non-profit perspective, it's a Holy Grail, a killer app, a nano-Nirvana: It makes the donor happy, and keeps dollars coming in.

Except I found out recently that's not how Kiva actually works. Not quite.

We've looked at Webloyalty and Vertrue, two of the three companies under investigation by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee after thousands of complaints about their billing and privacy practices. Now we take a look at the third, Affinion, of Norwalk, Conn.

Last week we looked at Webloyalty's steps to address the flood of consumer complaints that helped trigger a Senate Commerce Committee investigation in May. This week we'll look at Vertrue, subpoenaed by the committee in late July when it didn't comply with Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-W. Va.) request for internal documents.

First thing a consumer needs to know about Vertrue are the names of its various loyalty and other marketing programs, in case you have a mystery credit card charge you're trying to track down. Good luck! You'll be dealing with Vertrue's Adaptive Marketing subsidiary. Frankly, you might want to consider grinding your credit card through the laundry a few times, then reporting it lost to get rid of recurring charges. Sure, your credit rating may take a hit, but that may be better than enduring the frustration of trying to get these charges removed. And it probably beats your chances of getting through to somebody at Vertrue's corporate Web site.

Nobody wants to get nailed with unexpected credit card charges in this economy. Who's got money to waste?

If you've ever been startled by tiny little charges appearing on your monthly statement that contain the words "rewards," or "club" you swear you didn't pay for, there's a fairly good chance you've done business with Webloyalty, Vertrue or Affinion, though you didn't know it at the time. A boatload of consumers are with you.

And that's why these three companies, all privately owned, half an hour drive from each other on I-95 in Stamford and Norwalk, Conn., recently found themselves the subject of an investigation by the Senate Commerce Committee. From what I've heard, they haven't been particularly cooperative so far.

If you've struggled with weight loss, it's possible a doctor may have prescribed you the drug phentermine.

It comes from the amphetamine family (its name is a composite of phenyl-tertiary-butylamine) and therefore is a Class IV controlled substance, putting it in the same league as Xanax, Valium and chloral hydrate, the stuff someone's always putting in James Bond's drinks to knock him out. No controlled substance prescription, no phentermine for you.

Remember the fen-phen scare from the 1990s? The combo of fenfluramine and phentermine may have helped some people lose weight, but it also gave them heart attacks, and litigation costs are still running into the gazillions.

You may have seen TV ads for a customized personal history of your family name, printed out on faux-parchment and hallway-display-ready (the commercials are about as cheesy as Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Obama's). You may have found your way to the MyFreeScroll.com Web site, typed in your personal information (note the "free" scroll costs $7 in shipping and handling -- big bucks for a computer printout -- and fended off the half-dozen or so attempts to get you to buy add-ons before placing your order.

But if you were expecting warm finding-your-roots feelings from your printout, er, scroll, hoping to learn you were descended, say, from a long, dignified line of Bavarian pretzel-bakers or Alsatian goatherds, you'll be disappointed.

At least I was, when my free $7 scroll arrived. Instead of a detailed history, there was a two-sentence summary of basic info any grandparent worth their salt would have passed on to you already, or that you could have found through the quickest of Google searches. (Or, while you were at it, you could have checked out the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation's search site. It's free.)

The rest is all boilerplate about the history of, well, why family names have history behind them.

These days it's getting so you can't tell the consumer watchdogs from the crooks. I've exposed a number of phony do-gooders over the years, and the pretend-watchdog routine runs rampant among competing marketers of junk-products like acai berry supplements and colon cleansers.

The way it works: One group of bogus marketers sets up something that looks like a product review site, and calls it a name that sounds like a consumer advocate. All the links on the page lead to product sites owned by the same company.

This time, though, we're going to look at a dressed-up, work-from-home scam. Here's a site that calls itself TheConsumerWatchdog.org. It pops up in link ads on, among other places, the Internet Movie Database.

At first, the site looks kind of convincing, with links to a radio network and an embedded video from an ABC network TV show that appears to be talking about this particular work-at-home site.

It's a common tactic of bogus marketing sites to link to video clips from network TV shows or to festoon the site with logos from big-media brands, to try to imply an endorsement that isn't there. Sure, Diane Sawyer may have been talking about working from home -- but not about what this site is selling.