A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The House Plant Forum Cacti and Succulents Indoors Does my Jade Plant have Scale? Please help!

I've grown my Jade plant from a leaf (over five years) ago and it's never had problems before.
We put it out in the summer and bring it in for winter.
This year, we didn't have enough room and ended up putting the plant on a counter next to the back door. It is a window door (faces east) and is next to a window, and should be recieving enough sunlight.
My dad has done lots of gardening and the plant has not been overwatered or underwatered.
Today he left for a long trip and I forgot to ask him about spots on my plant before he left.

It has black crusty looking spots on some of the leaves surrounded and covered by a thin layer of white, wispy material.
I've done quite a bit of internet research, and think it's probably a scale infection.

I was wondering if this IS scale or are they just cold spots? The white, moldy-like stuff went away after I wiped it with a damp rag, but came back after a week and the black spots remain. I don't want to poison or misdiagnose my plant...

If it is scale, how should it be treated?

Some sites say to use Schultz's Fungicide 3, but I don't know the side effects of this product or the price range.
This site had a topic about scale for a eucalyptus, and they suggested using a combination of veggitable oil, Murphy's soap and water spray.
They also suggested using rubbing alcohol (also mentioned on other sites).

Which of these methods would be the safest? For the plant and the house (it is indoor now and I don't want to poison my family)?
How can I prevent scale(or whatever infection this is) in the future?
Will a bug actually come out when I clean out the leaves? I am not quite sure what scale is.

Would it be easier to just take the couple of leaves with the infection off? It has many many leaves and has had entire branches taken off and transplanted, but it is the winter season and I don't want to hurt it...

I've read that rubbing alcohol will remove scale. I've read the same about yellow Listerine. I think the oil based stuff works well on soft scale.

Just wondering, though, is it possible that it's mealy bugs you have? If so, a spray bottle with a mixture of water, rubbing alcohol and dish soap (not dish detergent) will help. Insecticidal soap works well too. In fact Insecticidal might work for scale as well.

What ever you do, you'd probably need to keep the routine once per week for about a month.

Could you post a picture of your plant? I would love to see a jade that was started as a leaf five years ago.

I learnt that if it is scale, that the rubbing alochol will have to get under the shell of the scale insect or else it won't work.