Alexander: Reawakened Prodigy e-mail gushes spam

QSomeone who didn't know my current e-mail address sent an e-mail to my old Prodigy.net e-mail account, which I haven't used for eight years. Now everyone who was in my Prodigy contact list, and still uses the same e-mail address, is being inundated with spam, some of it pornographic. How can I stop this?

MIKE HASLMEN, ST. PAUL

AMy guess is that your Prodigy e-mail account was taken over by a hacker long ago, but because the account appeared to be dormant (and its contact list likely out of date) there was no perceived advantage in using it to send spam.

When your friend mistakenly sent an e-mail to the old Prodigy.net account, whoever controls the account became convinced the account was active again, and began to use it to send spam to the e-mails in your Prodigy.net contact list.

There's not much you can do about the spam your friends are receiving. Since the Prodigy service is no longer available, there's no company to contact about a long-inactive account. And, in any event, once a spammer has your friends' e-mail addresses you can't prevent the addresses from being used in the future.

The best you can do is advise your friends to send the Prodigy.net e-mails from your old account to their spam filters. Under no circumstances should they reply; that simply validates their e-mail addresses and guarantees they'll get more spam.

QI recently tried to download vacation photos from my Kodak EasyShare camera to my iMac computer. But iPhoto showed that the camera contained nothing but blue blocks where the photos should have been. A pop-up screen said the computer did not recognize the format of the camera's files.

I've downloaded more than 1,000 photos and never had this problem until now. Any ideas?

JEFF CARLSON, MINNEAPOLIS

AKodak says if your computer can't recognize the format of the your photos, either the photos or the camera card is corrupted, meaning its data is no longer in the right sequence to be read.

Sometimes this happens for no apparent reason. In other cases, a photo can be corrupted if the memory card is used in another camera, or if a photo is edited on a computer and then stored again on the memory card. Photos can also be corrupted if a memory card is removed while the camera is still storing a picture on the card.

Kodak suggests reformatting the memory card -- which erases everything -- to make a clear start.

I suggest buying a new memory card instead, in case the original card is flawed.

E-mail tech questions to steve.j.alexander@ gmail.com, or write to Tech Q&A, 425 Portland Av., Minneapolis, MN 55488. Include name, city and telephone number.