[squiffy]

That does seem high. Most banks are paying at most 4% for a 6 month or 1 year CD, with substantial penalty for early withdrawal, hence no ability to access the money in the meantime, unless you want to forfeit all or most of your interest.

The fine print does say the rate is guaranteed only until Dec. 31 2005 or Jan. 2006, if I recall correctly.

And it is possible that to get the 4%, you need to maintain a huge minimum balance of say 100K. It's not really clear to me.

I am very interested in getting high rates, but I have been reading so much recently about computer hackers being able to steal your passwords and drain your accounts, that I am thinking about cutting back on my online banking and purchasing transactions.

Online banking is convenient. But if someone figures out how to steal my info and drain my accounts, it would really suck.