Well, I am still one of those without my personal e-mail addy listed on my member page, but can have e-mail sent to me through GW. In the past, I have had my addy listed and have had serious problems with spam mail that comes from other forums on GW. Since I post on quite a few of the other forums on GW, I found that some of them do have their fair share of spam type posts; advertising for various websites, products etc. When my e-mail addy was available for anyone to see, these posts would pop up on these other GW forums and within an hour or so I would have the spam coming to my e-mail box about the product, site etc. Once I realized where all this spam was coming from, I removed my addy from my member page, and that was the end of the spam coming from here. Hope you all understand why I no longer have my e-mail addy available to see, but as I said, you can send it through GW and I would say that 95% of the time I don't have a problem getting it. Fran

Yes! Get rid of Incredimail! Nothing personal but that is a very trustworthy program and the owners claim the rights to everything that you send via email using their program. Not many people read the EULA (End User License Agreement), and don't realize that if you are using Incredimail to send emails with new ideas/concepts etc., then Incredimail can claim copyright to your ideas etc. because you assigned them the copyrights when you agreed to use the program by clicking on "I Agree" when you installed it. Many of experts consider it Spyware as well. Yes, IncrediMail provides amusing, all-singing, all dancing, animated, colored, formatted, flashing, bleeping, blurping emails--- but with the certainty of tons of excess baggage riding along with the email; with the possibility of opening the door to malicious HTML-borne worms, viruses, and such; and with serious questions about who owns the content of the messages you send using their system. Others may have a more positive solution for you. Here is a link that might be useful: Incredimail Spyware & Copyright issues?

It's very hard to absorb how many parents, esp moms, are hated by their grown kids. We think they will outgrow it when they move beyond their teen years. But more and more are unwilling to honestly discuss their issues with their parents. Most of us remember the dignity and respect we gave to our own parents, no matter how imperfect and often abusive they were to us. We looked in on and called them because we still showed respect for our elders, especially our own parents. What happened? Many (not all) of young adults feel entitled - entitled to everything we have, despite it taking a lifetime of work and saving up for what we have and what we've built. They get resentful and angry if we don't keep giving. They INVENT reasons to hate us - which is another reason they can't communicate with us. They don't know exactly why they hate us. The key is that most of us parents have not done anything bad to our kids. They don't want to 'talk about it' because there isn't anything to nail us with. Sometimes we can figure out the reason(s), but a lot of times, we have absolutely no clue. It's like they woke up one day and decided to hate Mom (or Dad, brother or sister, whoever) for the rest of their lives, amen, no reason need be given. Two of our daughters, the sweetest little girls, grew into extremely independent teens who eventually, one at 14 and the other at 25, despised the very breath I breathed. Nothing I could say or do could reach them. Yes, we tried offering psychologists to them, and one is still in therapy 15 yrs later (not getting anywhere). So far, it's been almost 2 decades of their growing, venom-dripping hatred towards me. Our son adores me and he is the only one with children. I had to let go and let God. There was no other choice I had. It takes two to communicate, two in a relationship, two to share, give and understand. One cannot do it alone. I lost my own dignity by spending so much time begging, pleading with them, "Why?" I no longer will stoop to that level. Now I am sick, bedridden, and my husband is pained to see me without our daughters in our lives. He has no idea what happened to them either. We had to let them go. Yet every day, every day, it feels as if I am stabbed in my heart by them. I still remember them as sweet innocent little girls who loved mommy. Unfortunately, we are seeing more of what is like an epidemic of selfish, snobbish, disrespectful children who grow into that kind of an adult. I truly believe it is the influence of the self absorbed people in entertainment and in the world around us, as well as fulfillment of Bible prophecies. (No, I won't be Bible thumping but if you would like to know the precise scriptures that foretell children hating their parents, then PM me.) Until then, we have hope as parents that our grown children will somehow, some day, return to us. That hope never dies, does it? No matter how badly they've hurt us, we still hope. ~peace, and love to all

Always move them to your junk mail folder do not just delete them that is how your email program learns what is junk. Also it is not advised to click on the unsubscribe me because in actuality that lets them know it is a good valid email address and one that more spam can be sent to. In most email programs you can set up extra filters other than the standard ones that come programed in. That would be in the program settings and options. Hotmail has a sweep feature that if you get one email from a specific address you can tell it to send all future emails from them to a specific location including the junk mail folder. I don't know about aol. Of course the number one way that your email address gets on the spammers list is by being on forwarded emails, so always remove the names and addresses before forwarding and use the BCC feature to hide all email addresses on the email.