More than half the women and two thirds of men don’t shower on work-at-home days according to a survey conducted last year by research firm Insight Express for security systems vendor SonicWall.

What’s more, one in eight male teleworkers and one in 14 female teleworkers say they do their jobs in the nude.

Now don’t take this wrong, but SonicWall’s survey also showed that eight-eight percent of the 941 people interviewed admitted they store passwords in unsafe spots. Um, you don’t suppose they mean . . . ? Naw.

But all that doesn’t keep them from being productive—possibly even reproductive. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed said working at home makes them more productive and thirty-five percent of those interviewed in an InnoVisions Canada survey said their love lives were positively affected by working at home. Figures, if you’ll pardon the expression, since teleworkers are less stressed, have more free time together, and they’re closer to the bedroom.

Remember, the (ahem) behind the scenes story of The Emperor’s New Clothes fairytale is that he worked from home!

New work-at-home job and business opportunity scams are launched every day. That’s why we started this scambusting series and why we’ll continue it every Friday until we run out of scams—in other words, not anytime soon.

There’s obviously no honor among thieves in this business so rather than inventing something new, the majority of the shysters out there simply copy the work of their soon-to-be-cellmates. Here’s a classic you’ll see frequently as you comb the web in search of work from home opportunities:

The Work-At-Home Bait and Switch Scam:

A work-at-home or home business opportunity web site offers you free access to their listings. So far, so good. They’ll even email you new listings as they’re added. Sounds good.

Unfortunately, when you click on the listings the jobs look great, but—and there’s almost always a but—they don’t tell you who the employers are. If you want that little bit of information, you have to sign up for the web site’s resume distribution services.

For a mere $29.99 they’ll allow you to apply for as many jobs as you want for 3 months. Or, choose their $59.99 premium service, and they’ll forward your resume to their phantom employers for a full year. Best of all, their $199.99 super-duper service offers to email your resume to thousands of employers so you can just sit back and let the job offers come to you.

I followed one of the more prominent bait and switch web sites to see where it led. The first thing I received was this email:

Hi Kate:

When you first signed up with us you were taken to a special page that gave you the opportunity to apply for work directly with us. However, our support desk has recently been getting emails from people who missed that link. So, in case you missed it…here it is again:

When I clicked on the link the email provided, it took me to a full page of ads for other bait and switch sites. At the bottom of the page was a line that offered a link to the many jobs they themselves were offering—as a result of their overwhelming growth. There were so many, they had to assemble them into categories. Feeling geeky, I chose the programming category. Click, blink, and I’m on a page with more ads for bait and switch programming job links and, as always, lots of links to sites that offered salvation from scams:

• Data Entry Jobs Exposed

• Avoid Work-at-Home Scams

• They’re All Scams

• I Was Scammed 101 Times . . .

Stay on that site and you can be scammed 101 times too! The entire site, and all the sites it links to have one purpose—to get you to click on the ads so they make money.

Stay tuned each Friday for more in this Work-At-Home Scambusting series.

If you missed earlier posts in this series, these links will catch you up:

• Feds Target Work At Home Scams

• Scambusting Work At Home Intro

• Spotting Work At Home Scams—Video From RatRaceRebellion.com

• Home Business Scam—Free Money

Future Scambusting posts will include:

• How to Spot a Work-From-Home Scam or Home Business Opportunity RipOff

• 10 Questions To Ask Before You Sign Up for a Home-Based Job or Business

• How to Use the Web to Investigate Prospective At-Home Work

• Getting Even—What to Do If You’ve Been Scammed Read the rest of this entry »

Telecommuters are being taxed by states where they don’t live, vote or use schools, libraries, fire departments and other services. That’s because their employers are based in states that assess income tax on nonresident employees, regardless of how often they visit the office.

States are waking up to the idea that nonresident telecommuters are an untapped revenue stream. This can be a nightmare for peope who work from home.

Courts have upheld this treatment of nonresident telecommuters, at least in New York. And other states are jumping on the bandwagon thanks to New York State’s success.

The rule is that if employees of a New York company are required to work outside the state as a job requirement, they’re subject to income tax only for those days that they work in New York. But if the same workers choose to work outside New York for their own convenience, they’re subject to income tax on they’re full income—unless the workers never work in New York during the tax year, then the taxman makes an exception.

Congress has sopme bill pending to address this. But they completed their last session without taking up the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act which would require states to apply income taxes to nonresidents only for the days they show up in the office, preventing the double tax.

Moral of the story? Until Congress straightens this out, and because telecommuting is unquestionably good for your employer, get a letter that says you’re working from home for their benefit.

Bruce Olds in Tampa FL builds detailed, full-size metal replicas of NASA space capsules in his basement. And they’re good enough to be displayed in musems. It all just goes to prove that work is where you find it, especially when it comes to a home based business.

Olds studied automotive mechanics at Tampa Bay Technical High School and later took night classes, learning welding, plumbing and air-conditioning repair. In 1999 he read a book titled “Chariots for Apollo” that described the fate of 15 lunar excursion modules, and his obsession began.

Now, although his market is small and his product is expensive ($40,000 plus shipping), his obsession is a home-based business and his full-time job.

Spacecraft Exhibits is on the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~spacecraftex/

Here’s our weekly round up of work-at-home and telecommuting job news from across the nation and around the world.