About all the virus email. I see how people are still worried even when they have a good inti virus program. If I was to download and attatchment and not open it, it still kinda worries me. I simply dont like to download anything corrupt or any scripts. So this is why I use and an @yahoo.com address. No attachments are downloaded until they can be scanned or the letter deleted. So its not just unopened, its never downloaded. I changed my server email so I still have a home address and told just a few people that email and opened a yahoo email and told the rest of the people I chose to tell my address has CHANGED to *****@yahoo.com.
yahoo email has block address and a seperate folder for bulk mail! So only email sent to one address at a time ever gets checked. I delete bulk mail folder once a week or so. Most times I never look at bulk mail. It is a great way out for the worrisome people. Get a yahoo email account and use it for all the forums and signups. Get off the mailing list. Change your home email too. That is the best way. I keep my PC safe and clean and feel better about it with yahoo. And to that I say "Yahooooooo!
Tony

I guess I should proof read These things before I send it! HA HA pardon the mistakes and long sentence. Let me take a deep breath! Phew. better now!

Tony,

I guess Yahoo is o.k. if you don't mind being spammed. At present, I am at war with Yahoo for allowing their Spammers to pepper me to death on a past email address. The spam was coming from Yahoo email addresses. They promised to look into it and did nothing even though I threatened to sue them for a breach of privacy. I dumped them and changed my email address. Sometimes, I think I would welcome a virus that my Nortons will take care of to Spam, Spam, Spam. Spam is o.k., if you are lonely and have nothing better to do than to read it.

Yahoo does business with adclick. and yahoo allows adclick to set cookies on your pc. Everyone should run a program called adawre on their pc! Seeing that I use yahoo games etc..... I have my security settings set to ignore adclick script and so i never have any invisible scripts running on my pc. Adaware finds and cleans them and it is free. Found at download.com, adare finds what is invisible, and u can't find in a folder or Ctrl/alt/delete menu or anywhere on your pc. They are truely invisible and so all should run adaware free version and get rid of what they don't know is there. porn sites, and other sites use these tags to send back info on where u surf and your private info. Run adaware to clear your mind if anything. easy to install and use! great program!
I continue to use yahoo email cuz it is my junky email and just the one i use for online sites etc... And my personal email gets very little mail and no un known sender mail. If yahoo mail gets bombarded I will change the address. As of the last year I get about 12 emails a week, and 4 of them being junk but not in bulk folder. bulf folder I dont use. I simply delete them all once a week. But the point is here, my pc never downloads ANY attachments at all. And that is the beauty of it. I happen to value that enough to put up with deleting a few junk mails a week and a bulk folder. Small price to pay for staying 100 % protected, having nortons also. Yahoo will also scan with their nortons before downloading attachments if you simply click it. even if your nortons is not updated it always find a virus on unknown emails. I check some bulk ones just to cure my couriosity and they are usually virus.
Tony.
Tony

Tony,
I followed your advice and downloaded Adaware. It found 108 files for me to delete.
Exactly how do you disable adclick on your security settings? I can't find a specific reference to it.
Thanks,
DonM

The alternative is to go through the custom security settings disabling or setting permissions on various active X controls, cookies, java and scripting permissions - but then you get nag screens asking whether you want to see this or that in a web site etc when surfing, and it soon gets tedious.

adaware or adwatch are easier, run them before a backup, when you run window washer and generally clean up all the rubbish windows leaves behind.

using yahoo and the others in this way is notorious for spam and spyware, also loading all the freebies available, stuff like real player is also a pest, and to be avoided if at all possible. Most cookies are harmless but you get the occasional exe hidden as a text file, which is not nice. The worst examples actually try to overwrite your winsock32 dll, which is the key windows protocol enabling you to get on the internet! unbelievable!

you need to be careful however. For instance the latest divx codecs for mpeg4 video that I prefer come in 2 versions, one with advertisements and legitamate spyware (they are quite upfront about this), and one without the ads but to be paid for.

If you run adaware on the spyware version and delete everything, you lose the functionality of the full version. However the latest version of adaware allows you the flexibility to keep selected settings. A quick experiment allows the identification of the registry key that allows full functionality of the codec, while still deleting all the ads and the spyware. This key can then be set to be ignored whenever doing a adaware run.