Annoying AOL ads call for two e-mail solution

QAOL is using the space at the bottom of my free e-mail to show advertisements for Betty Crocker products. The problem is that the graphic ads take several minutes to load, run and disappear. I've been with AOL so long that literally hundreds of people have my e-mail address, and I don't want to change it. How can I avoid having AOL e-mail show advertising?

GERALD ROGERS, MINNEAPOLIS

AYou can't completely stop AOL from showing you ads; that's the company's strategy for making money on a free e-mail service. You can only opt out of AOL's "behavioral ads," which are based on your Web browsing, by going to tinyurl.com/4ybvwu8.

So you either have to put up with the AOL ads or find a new free e-mail account with a different e-mail address. The good news is that there's a way to avoid losing your old e-mail address entirely: Maintain two e-mail addresses, and have the new account import your contacts and received e-mail from the old account. You can then gradually switch your friends over to your new e-mail address by sending all new messages from the new account. Google, whose free Gmail service displays written ads but not graphic ones, shows you how at tinyurl.com/yb6xpnp.

For reviews of 10 free e-mail services, including their ad policies, see tinyurl.com/23j6lpr. (Only one of the 10 services shows no advertising at all. But three of them show only text ads, which I find less intrusive and which take less time to load than graphic advertising.)

QI contacted my bank, the National Bank of Arizona, because the "s" that designates a secure website was not in the e-mail address I've been using to contact the bank.

Because I allow several companies to access my bank account for payments, I wonder how much security there is for those transactions.

ASecure Web page connections, which are identifiable by the "https" in a website address, are just for websites. They don't have anything to do with e-mail.

From what I can tell, your Web page transactions with the bank are being protected. When I go to the National Bank of Arizona's website, this address pops up on my browser: www.nbarizona.com/. That means any transactions with the bank through that website are encrypted to prevent them being intercepted and read by anyone else.

Considering that I got a secure connection when I wasn't even logged in as a bank customer, I think your transactions, and those of the companies that collect payments from your account, are getting the same protection.