"E-mail spam has plunged by more than half since Christmas Day when the world's largest criminal spamming operation inexplicably shut down. Even so, cybersecurity experts have moved to high alert: They fear that top spamming groups might be shifting to sneakier, more lucrative online scams. "If the past is any indication, these guys will regroup," says Fred Touchette, senior analyst at messaging security firm AppRiver. On Dec. 25, the Rustock botnet the world's largest source of the unsolicited messages that inundate e-mail systems went dark, followed by two smaller operations. Spam is difficult to eradicate because it originates from networks of infected home PCs; the Rustock botnet used as many as 1.7 million PCs to send out e-mail ads for fake drugs." Saw this today interesting, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-01-11-1Aspam11_ST_N.htm Here is a link that might be useful: usatoday

As promised, I'm back with an update. It is now working! but I'm not sure what really fixed it, or if it maybe just fixed itself. I know what I did and what order, thus what didn't fix it. I did the router/modem unplug/wait thing and rebooted...no help. CCleaner-no help disc clean-up via accessories-no help reboot-no help updated and did full scans using Super-antispyware, and Spybot Search and Destroy, and Malwarebites Anti-Malware Nothing of any significance was found via the scans and after checking for updates and running that many scans I couldn't say for sure if I rebooted between each one or not. I just know it took a long time. I ran the Malwarebytes last and only cookies were found and I discovered the Hotmail started working during the scan. I'm now a happy camper but have a new question for a new thread. Thanks again Zep. At least my computer is all updated and clean. Lastly last night I even went and did updates on Windows as I don't like having them set to automatic. Sue

ravencajun... When signing into my yahoo account,They said my account has been compromised. Whenever I signed in, it said check Need help signing in to Yahoo!? * Enter the text you see in the picture. To ensure the security of your account we require you to complete this sign-in verification after five failed attempts to sign in. * Is the "Caps Lock" or "A" light on your keyboard on? If so, hit "Caps Lock" key before trying again. * Did you forget or misspell your ID or password? You can recover your ID and/or password by confirming your private information. * Still having trouble? Try sign-in help. * Did you forget to include your full Yahoo! ID? If so, please remember to use your full Yahoo! ID (e.g. free2rhyme@yahoo.com) to sign in.

I personally use firefox you simply go here(link is at bottom in instructions) and hit the download button to download it to your pc,in the dialog box you can just click run from there or if you saved it to your pc go to it and double click to install, during install/setup it will ask you if you want to import your settings and favorites from IE say yes to all that way it will set it up exactly as you have your IE, it will ask if you want to set it as your default you can say no to that, that leaves IE as your main default browser, that can be changed at any time easily. Once it has installed you will open firefox it will open to the firefox website to let you know it has properly installed, it will only do this the first time, after that when you open it you will go to what ever you had as your home page on IE since it transferred that info over. It will not change anything at all on your IE. That is it, you are done, when you want to use it just click on the firefox icon on your desktop, you can use it along side IE with no problems. There are some very good add ons for firefox the one I recommend first is the ad block plus with easylist which will stop all the ads you see when visiting websites. here are the instructions with pictures Install Firefox on Windows