Well, I am still one of those without my personal e-mail addy listed on my member page, but can have e-mail sent to me through GW. In the past, I have had my addy listed and have had serious problems with spam mail that comes from other forums on GW. Since I post on quite a few of the other forums on GW, I found that some of them do have their fair share of spam type posts; advertising for various websites, products etc. When my e-mail addy was available for anyone to see, these posts would pop up on these other GW forums and within an hour or so I would have the spam coming to my e-mail box about the product, site etc. Once I realized where all this spam was coming from, I removed my addy from my member page, and that was the end of the spam coming from here. Hope you all understand why I no longer have my e-mail addy available to see, but as I said, you can send it through GW and I would say that 95% of the time I don't have a problem getting it. Fran

See this yahoo help article. Someone is either spoofing yoru email or has hacked your account. If the link doesn't work google "yahoo account sending spam" and the help doc should come up. http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?locale=en_US&page=content&y=PROD_ACCT&id=SLN2068&pir=fpZBPiRibUl12ul7dccwAF0qylL_GBBgUXiZ7tzCaGojVijjEIvQXUCC2g9cGQy1gxDypw3zLZQzXdFNHimx8S9KKYPhWmRJ7e0PolCCs.vn3FvDg5sER1BPhaW4oWjZPjwGNZXVB2s9SOg9MxBqURlcLcsYAMmm1VOFuoETAjfNVVr3aQyy0TtzR_t3SOasOf7CjwlelaxmVLTmatjBFo.eK7vuOdB3Cm5CbswTOSivJS5BMKOg2qHWeO1PJ9QMwWr3xLuB8GBWQCCWtoRx.CoFRrvSsKBWxwi1FuEv08H2LSoMzmsIgtg3242P9YHbrf8RXR0idLjf_wu.XeZYhgT7W1pPla2rFk_oV0OpRFPxOx_ZAEu1huMIdu.vOjPpbIb_9wByyxauo5dcXa6KGYs6_M9NSFJOH_JH6mk-

Thanks very much for the advice. We did notify the friend right away (fortunately, without (forwarding anything), just in case, but in the process of getting the software for my husband, our young friend had taken over his i-Pad--no doubt as a kindness to "the elderly," done all the necessary things for him, and in the process given someone his birth date and email address. He doesn't know if she gave them to the coffee shop so as to use its WiFi, or to the company offering the free software. Knowing that public WiFi can be dangerous, I assume that his email address had been intercepted and used in a phishing attempt or perhaps to install malware. Many years ago, I got the Hiloti virus by clicking on a PDF notice purporting to be from UPS about being unable to deliver a package--just on the day I was expecting one. Wouldn't have clicked on the PDF if it weren't for that. The minute I clicked on the Adobe PDF file that claimed to contain the details of what to do to claim my package, poof, it disappeared and my PC subsequently went haywire. I really learned my lesson, and now we are careful to check with the sender if anything is the least suspicious. I didn't know it could be dangerous for us to forward such an email, but would have phoned the friend in advance to make sure she didn't click on anything. Full scans using both Norton and Trend Micro's House Call failed to detect anything dangerous, so with that and your kind answer, I guess I can sleep tonight! Thank you for the link to the tips, too. I will read and save them.

I keep wanting to switch my primary email but it seems like a daunting task to figure out all who should or need to know. If I leave my email I want to leave it, not feel the need to come back and scroll through mountains of junk to see if I missed anything important. A lot of mine are companies I don’t mind hearing from, but wish I’d just get an occasional sale announcement not a newly contrived sale each week and daily reminders about these sales. I have a mental image of young marketing majors trying to prove their worth by how many emails they can pump out a day. My current routine is to go through a day’s worth, or two or three when forgotten, and delete, unsubscribe, or mark spam as needed. Seems fitting to perform this task on the toilet. I actually find this junk less offensive than all the paper that goes straight from mailbox tl recycle bin.