Since we had the unfortunate event of getting spam forwarded to the list, let me toss out a suggestion or so. I trust you all. However, when my name is in your address book and you send out a joke, cartoon, a link that has to be clicked on ... no matter how much I trust YOU, I almost never click on any link or forward on what has been forwarded to me. Why? Because names in address books in your e-mail program can be hacked very easily. The spammer or the virus bearer then sends out e-mails to everyone in your mailbox and it looks totally legit because it has your "return" address on it! "Why, this e-mail is from Cassandra; I've known her for years, it must be safe." But, lo and behold, it's not from Cassandra (made up name of course!); it's from a spammer and that link might open me up to a virus, trojan or whatever. Even in the most beautiful of forwards - pass this on to your best friend, it's friendship day, etc. etc. there can and often is, embedded a virus or a door thru which a spammer can get your e-mail address and password - and those of everyone in your mailbox.. Now - what I do which helps eliminate most of the fake e-mails. If I need to forward a picture or an article (or an index to my book), I announce it in the email (or you have requested it), and many times, I'll send an e-mail and said - "I will be sending you an attachment in the next e-mail. It is clean." That way the receiver is much more secure. I run a virus program, a firewall - everything possible to be sure that my system is clean. I keep it up to date, check it frequently to see what it has caught. None of us ever mean to send out spam or a bad link but it does happen. If it does, we need to change either our e-mail address (which is hard when we're on hundreds of lists) or our password. I would also like to recommend a safe search engine that I've used for several years - and of course, I get nothing for the recommendation. I got sick of the ads popping up for my local area on the sites and knowing that the major search engines track you. I use Startpage.com as my search engine. It works just like the major ones, has the same hits and advantages. And, it does not track you. Experiment with it - go to a site thru the regular search engine and see ads for your town or you suddenly get e-mails from a place selling things you were searching for. Then go to Startpage.com and go to the same site. Bingo, the ads are gone and you are anonymous. Even if I know the URL of a regular site I use all the time (outside of the rootsweb sites), I'll log in on Startpage.com and then type in the sites' name I want, click on it. It's just a little extra protection. That's it for tonight - just be careful with attachments, forwards, links and searches. It'll keep you safer! Sandi Sandi's Puzzlers: http://www.gensoup.org/gorinpuzzles/index.php Sandi's site: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/ Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index?list=south-central-kentucky