The problem in this case had nothing to do with my formal Contacts list; messages were sent to a much wider audience than that. I'm guessing anyone I've sent a message to (or received a message from?) got spammed. I might have been able to prevent it if I didn't store messages online, but one of the reasons I use Yahoo is so my e-mail is available from any computer and I don't need to use an offline e-mail program. I shall be more careful to delete/move messages from my Sent folder in case that helps, although I try to do that periodically anyway. I also follow Dave's advice about passwords, although I could be more diligent about the frequency with which I change my password. Connie Linda Johnson <lindajohnsongenealogy@yahoo.com> wrote: > I've been fortunate not to have my > e-mail accounts hijacked, but one thing I've done to protect > others in the aftermath of having received spam from the > accounts of several people whose accounts have been hijacked > is this:  simply copy your contacts list to a different > location (I put mine into a Word document), then delete all > of your contacts from Yahoo or whatever service you use. > It's inconvenient to have to cut and paste addresses from > the Word document, but I think it's worth the trouble to > help avoid spreading spam. Who knows, if enough people > deleted their contact lists, perhaps the spammers would find > it less worthwhile to do what they do. >