I don't ususally forward these types of messages, but since some already brought up the subject, thought I would pass along what I got from another list. This message is directed at people on this list who are AOL customers. If it does not apply to you, but you know someone who does use AOL, you may want to forward it on to them. Perhaps many of you have noticed a recent increase in e-mail being sent to you by what appears to be other members of AOL and have found upon opening it that it is an advertisement for pornography sites, on-line gambling, and other garbage that you would prefer not to receive in the first place. For one thing, it can fill up your mail box in a hurry if you don't open it very often. I was getting an average of three per day, and they were not that difficult to identify, even without opening them. So, most of the time I just delete them without opening them. Beginning last weekend I started recording the e-mail address of the person who sent the mail in hopes of getting revenge somehow. In a period of five days I had 18 porno ads and none of them were from the same person. That seemed mighty strange. Yesterday morning I contacted the AOL Community Action Team at 1-888-265-3733 and spoke to a lady about what was going on. She indicated that the same thing was happening to her, only in larger quantities. She also indicated that whoever is doing it has figured out a way to obtain members passwords and they are sending these notices out using other people's accounts. That explains why every address has been different. One of the ways they are obtaining access and passwords into AOL members accounts is by sending them e-mail with offers of free prizes from AOL. If you open these up and then download to see the free offer, it may ask you to enter your password to validate the prize. If you do, your hooked. The sad part is that probably most of the people who have been victimized by these sub-humans do not know this is happening to their account (YET). My next question was what can I do to stop getting this spam mail. Well it appears that it is going to probably take a while. But, what will help them catch the culprit(s) is to do the following steps: 1. If you open an e-mail from an AOL member (which you can recognize by the lack of a "@" followed by the internet service provider name), click on the "FORWARD" button and send it on to: tosspam (use lower case letters) 2. Then click on the "KEEP AS NEW" button 3. After that, click "DELETE" (unless you really do want to save it) NOTE: Even after deleting it, if you automatically save all outgoing e-mail you will still need to go to the "Mail Center" and choose "Read Off-Line Mail" so you can delete it from there as well. AOL will then use this information to do investigation of their own. Like I said, it may not stop the spam mail for a while, but it could be a start. Even more reason to be careful about what you download. I would suggest that you forward this note on to anyone else you know that uses AOL.