How many email addresses can we have in our Yahoo contacts address book?

Yahoo closed my account and I am trying to get this corrected. Will my contacts, messages, etc. still be there?

• My primary yahoo account was close without warning: I reported about a month ago to yahoo that I was getting 100's of returned email messages to addresses that I didn't even have in my address book. They replied that someone must have started using my email address in a return address and that with time, these 100's of messages that I would be getting would slow down and stop (they also gave me instructions about filters). I replied to them because I was concerned that my email address was being used this way, and again, their response was the same. The 100's of messages did stop for about a week, then started up again, and they then just shut off my account with no warning. This is very aggravating to me because I have been a good customer for many years and have been paying for Plus Mail on 4 accounts for several years with no problems. I am in the process of emailing them (what a terribly slow process for something of such importance) - I am worried that I will continue to get canned responses from them. All of my account contacts are in this account - and of course, all of my earlier emails to Yahoo, my proof that I was trying to work on this issue with them - gone! Will they still be there if they give me my account back and is there anything else I can do to contact them. I am going to delete all my account with them if this is how they treat a long-term customer.

• Answer:

  It is unbelievable that Yahoo employees told you how to use mail filters to get rid of your problem. If you told them exactly what you are telling us right now, they should have realized immediately that you may have gotten some kind of malware installed on your harddrive which uses your machine to send loads of spam. Those spam mails are sent randomly without knowing if they find a real mail account, most unsuspecting customers don't realize what's going on until huge amounts of mails bounce which they have never sent. Please do a spyware scan on your harddrive, if you don't have a good tool already, I suggest to get the freeware tool "hijackthis", it quickly scans your computer to find settings that may have been changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. HijackThis creates a report, or log file, with the results of the scan. Check the "overview, FAQ and quick start guide" buttons in the top bar to find out how this tool works. http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HijackThis Then google for "hijackthis forum", click on one of the many links and follow the prompts. Those forums have volunteers who help you to analyze your hijackthis log and get rid of the malware on your computer. Below are a couple of links to such forums: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum22.html http://www.techsupportforum.com/security-center/hijackthis-log-help/ http://www.security-forums.com/viewforum.php?f=48 http://aumha.net/viewforum.php?f=30 Once your harddrive is cleaned, you should get back with the Yahoo staff and tell them what happened in the meantime. Sorry, can't tell you whether you'll get your accounts back, but if they realize that you did all you could, there's still a chance.