I have had the same hotmail account since the day I got on the internet, so a LONG time, and never once had a problem with spam, hacking, or anything else. There were the occasional growing glitches as they changed the system over the years but I have been very happy with it. I personally never use the email that is provided by my ISP. The only time we did was way back in the days of MSN dial up! and even then I had my hotmail. So I do not think there is anything better about ISP over free either. I much prefer all of my freebies. I think since I have been on comcast I may have checked that email address I got there once in 2 yrs. And lo and behold it was full of spam LOL and never used. Passwords are key!!I tell my family that all the time and still they use their dogs name as their password, my neice's daughter helped her friends set up facebook and twitter accounts and she used the same password for ALL of them. She just could not understand why I nearly had a stroke on that one. I just give up. What does it take to create a password? To protect your savings and your identity? I personally keep a note book that has all my sites and their associated user name and password. I write it in there every time I get a new one or change one. I keep that notebook in a very secure locked location. Now if at some point a burglar manages to break into my house, kill me and my husband, steal my computers and also manage to find and steal my password notebook well at that point he can have it. Because I am pretty sure he will be bleeding pretty badly himself, and I won't need it. LOL

I agree that the requirement is stupid but I have a facebook page with absolutely no personal information on it.

Here is a link to Firefox and pages not loading properly. One of the many possible problems cited may be the add-ons and plug-ins but suggest you take the steps from the top. In your statement of your problem: 1-Error includes the word "chrome" and if that is Google's Chrome you might consider taking care of Chrome at least temporarily. (I avoid using Chrome because I am somewhat paranoid when it comes to Google and accusations of misuse of its data collection.) As to slowness of browsers, you might also look to make sure you do not have too many programs loading when you boot your computer. Here is a link that might be useful: Firefox - pages not loading properly

Kath, glad you got your email back. About Firefox 10.0.2. Is that what you had, or did you update it along with Thunderbird? Wondering what caused your problem. I don't know whether to get the update or not. I'm sure Alex will do well on the test. OJ, I had that same problem with Gmail. I use Yahoo now. There is a definite Love-Hate relationship with our computers. Sue