A lot of the advertisements come from cookies left by web pages on your computer. Look for a file "cookies.txt" and you will see the listing. I prefer to not allow cookies at all and so have set my browser to ask permission each time a cookie is proposed. Some web pages will ask many times. I no longer go to those, though the genweb pages are doing that excessively now too. Cookies left by web pages are how advertisers track your interests, orders, and some web pages use that to store the information you give them when registering, which can easily include an e-mail address. In original theory a cookie was supposed to only be readable by the web page that left it... If a hacker can load a virus through e-mail, a web page can read ALL the cookies. I use a package from ZD called Cookie Monster to regularly clean the cookie that show on my computer even when not authorized. There are mailers that achieve receipt by us all even without using our e-mail address. The latest couple e-mail viruii seem to be dependent on new "features" of the most recent microsoft outlook express. They viruii may not work on older browsers such as netscape 3 which doesn't allow javascripts to write to the drive. Just in case, I've disabled javascripts. Gerald J.