QI got an obviously fraudulent e-mail claiming to be from USAA bank. I tried to report it to phishing-report@us-cert.gov, an e-mail I got by Googling how to report spam. But when I tried to forward the message, it would not send. So I copied it and pasted it into a new e-mail. This e-mail was rejected by Yahoo's e-mail service with this message: "Your account has been temporarily blocked from sending messages. This block can be caused by sending messages that trigger our spam filters, or by having too many recipients in one e-mail." Can you suggest how to report this scam and others like it when my e-mail is being blocked?

BARBARA HOWIE, MIAMI

AWhen you tried to resend a spam message, Yahoo's automated e-mail filters flagged you as a spammer, even though you weren't.

These filters exist because spam now makes up about 90 percent of all e-mail sent, and the filters manage to stop most of it.

Why should Yahoo think that you, a law-abiding citizen, are a spammer? Large e-mail providers often find that someone using their service has had his or her PC taken over by malicious hackers and turned into a rebroadcasting point for spam. As a result, the providers disable offending e-mail accounts.

At Yahoo, these blockages are temporary, typically less than a day. Why? Automated spam filters are based on several e-mail scanning methods, including a "content filter" that uses what is called "fuzzy logic" to decide whether an e-mail is spam. This fuzzy logic is updated constantly, so that an e-mail flagged as spam one day may not be blocked the next.

If you continue to have problems reporting the spam (either by forwarding it or pasting it into a new e-mail), contact Yahoo customer service at tinyurl.com/27trlrn.

In addition to the spam reporting address you listed, the Federal Trade Commission suggests reporting spam to spam@uce.gov.

QI own a Panasonic Lumix digital camera that captures motion on an SD (Secure Digital) card. I can watch these clips on the camera, but when I transfer the files to a computer with the Picasa video editing program or to an external hard drive they only show up as pictures, with no audio or video. Is there an easy fix for this?

AMY MAAS, EAGAN

AYes. Your camera records video in the .MOV file format, and that file needs to be played on Apple's free QuickTime 7 video viewer. You can download it at www.apple.com/quicktime/. Once you install QuickTime, the Picasa video-editing program will work with your camera's movies.

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