Q: I received nine e-mails with photos from a relative in Puerto Rico. When I opened the first one, it suddenly disappeared from view. I thought that I had inadvertently deleted it in some way and checked in the "trash" file, but it wasn't there. So I went back to the "inbox" to open the second e-mail, and to my surprise, none of the eight remaining e-mails were there. However, all other e-mails I had received were still there, and my computer is otherwise working perfectly. What happened?
ANDY FUERTES, Miami
A: I suspect that a computer glitch at your e-mail provider caused your e-mail to disappear.
While your e-mail provider is bellsouth.net, it is owned by AT&T, which in turn outsources its consumer e-mail accounts to Yahoo. Yahoo's e-mail software was upgraded in April, and following that there were scattered reports of people mysteriously losing e-mail from their accounts.
You can take your particular problem directly to Yahoo by typing in "e-mail is disappearing" at tinyurl.com/bp2omd9. You'll be asked to sign in to your e-mail, then allowed to describe your problem in more detail.
Yahoo also offers a help page for people who have lost e-mails (see tinyurl.com/d9p96u3) that suggests ways to search your other e-mail folders for missing messages. It also tells you what to do if you believe your e-mail account has been hacked.
Q: I had problems with your explanation two weeks ago of how to get rid of the browser hijacking program "start.search.us.com." When I went to the website you recommended and downloaded the "free" software there, it turned out to be software that cost me $30 and showed that I had 553 errors on my computer. When I called to "activate" the software, a technician urged me to pay another $200 to clean up the computer problems.
When recommending software, you should check out these people.
