Q: When I start to type an address into a new e-mail, my iPhone makes "suggestions" about which address I might want. That would be fine if the suggestions came just from my contacts list. But the suggestions also include several addresses that I've never sent an e-mail to. At the top of this unfamiliar e-mail list is the message "Siri found in apps." How can I prevent these unwanted e-mail addresses from showing up as suggestions?
Chester Rorvig, St. Cloud, Minn.
A: Siri, the iPhone digital assistant, has been given considerable freedom to search through your phone's apps for information you might want. In this case, Siri is searching for e-mail addresses in both your contacts and your stored e-mail. As a result, the suggestions include familiar addresses from people you know plus unfamiliar addresses from e-mails you've received from strangers. Some of these unknown addresses could come from spam e-mails.
The easiest way to keep Siri from suggesting unfamiliar e-mail addresses is to turn off its ability to use your e-mail app. To do that, go to "settings," and choose "mail." In the mail menu, select "Siri and search." In the next menu, move the switch next to "show Siri suggestions in app" to the "off" position. After that, you'll get no e-mail suggestions at all. (To turn off Siri entirely, go to "settings," tap "Siri and search" and turn off all switches on the menu. When you get a pop-up menu, click "Turn off Siri.")
Alternatively, there is a way to leave Siri's e-mail suggestions on while reducing the number of unfamiliar addresses that you see. Go through your iPhone's stored e-mail; delete everything in the mailboxes "trash" and "junk." Then review the contents of the mailbox called "all mail" and delete everything you don't need. This deletion process will get rid of many unwanted e-mail addresses, but you'll need to repeat the process often to avoid accumulating more of them.
(Updated) A: I was mistaken when I recently said that Android phones have no up-close file-sharing feature like iPhone's Airdrop (see tinyurl.com/s5vdgvz).
James Kaufman of Eau Claire, Wis., pointed out that Android devices have a feature that uses a wireless technology called "Wi-Fi Direct." There are several Android apps that make use of this feature., and you can find them by searching the Google Play Store (see tinyurl.com/7kyo7cr) for "Wi-Fi Direct."
The iPhone and Android phone-to-phone file transfer speeds appear to be roughly the same. A test at MIT found that the Android app "Shareit" was 90% as fast as Airdrop.
Q: I installed the Facebook Messenger app on my Windows 10 PC before I got my Facebook account, and I got the error message "FBAPIErrorDomain error 100." What's wrong?
George Drake, Woodland Park, Colo.
A: When you install Facebook Messenger, it tries to connect to your Facebook account. Because you didn't have a Facebook account at the time, you got an error message that means "No matching user found." Uninstall Facebook Messenger, then download and install it again. Then, it should find your account.
E-mail tech questions to steve.j.alexander@gmail.com. Include name, city and telephone number.
