bus, I know what you mean. You hit forward and it will not let you then delete all the addys. I have found this to always be the situation when I want to forward something sent me from an @aol email addy, and possibly from an @aim addy. I just forget forwarding anything from them...sigh. Emails from most other folks can be deleted by using the forward button, going down to the top of the message to reply, and then holding down the delete key until they are all gone. I too use Hotmail directly, without OE. Sue

Hi, DA I'm not hiding state secrets either ! :-D But as the help forums at Gmail and Hotmail show, many people are hacked daily. (Not surprising, I suppose. Just do a search at YouTube for "Hotmail" or "Gmail" and see how many of the search results are how-to videos for hacking the accounts ! Just how many people out there are amateur hackers trying all these tricks to gain entry to someone's account ?!) Anyway, from reading the various threads, trying to get control back for an account to which one no longer has access -- esp. with a free email service ! -- can be a veritable nightmare, to put it mildly. Locked out, recovery options not working, etc. And the users are often limited to help via forums, often getting canned responses of "it's basically your own fault" even if it wasn't. Hopefully, people can convince tech support that they are, in fact, the legitimate 'owners' of the email account in question and can get it back without much trouble. But will all their email be there when they regain access ?? For others it's enough of a hassle to make them want to change providers, and even pay for better support in case it happens again. To avoid these frustrations the general advice from the 'experts' usually boils down to two items: better security upfront (strong password, difficult security question, etc.) and back ups (auto-forwarding to another account at another provider, downloading to one's email client, etc.). Like you, DA, most of my own online 'accounts' (message boards, twitter, or whatever) use a 6-8 character password that's not really all that difficult. But for my (two) email accounts I use the "nuclear launch code" method (LOL) just because I don't want to end up as so many others have, with loss of account and/or loss of all one's saved email information (messages, family photos, receipts, etc.). Fortunately, ilovedobies is at least still allowed access to the Hotmail account in question and apparently still has all saved emails, photos, etc. As you know, not all hackers (if that's the correct explanation here) are so 'kind.'

I couldnt even open a hotmail page, let alone log in. After several days, it came back on it's own. I didnt do anything. Today ... I cant get on again. I get: "Login Error Windows Live Hotmail was not able to sign in to your account at this time. Please try again later." What's frustrating is that if the people on this site are aware that there is a problem ... why do the people at microsoft seem oblivious? There's nothing on their web site. During the day or so when I was able to get in, there was no e-mail from them alerting me to the problem and assuring me that it was being fixed. Nothing. Get the distinct impression that they dont care.

I have had an account at inbox.com for years in fact I was one of the first accounts there, just one thing to remember there is that you must keep it active because if it goes a long time with no activity they can delete it but they usually do send you an email warning to which ever other email address you provided. My other suggested email that is really big and nice is gmx.com they have a great active forum and answer the questions and help suggestions right away. You can fetch your other mail through it also including hotmail. The link to gmx.com below is the best link to use to access your email there, it is the https secure link and if you notice up at the top next to the login button is one that says no popup, you can use that one to log in and it will open it in a new tab rather than a new window which is what I prefer. You can set up different sounds to alert you to new mail and you can change the colors too. Here is a link that might be useful: gmx secure no popup