Not only here but my spam folder has been very busy lately. Must be some kind of indication of the economy, just not sure if that is good or bad. Election years make things crazy.

True, Don...so many robo-political-calls, even for strictly local issues. Used to be volunteers discussing things and sometimes you could have an interesting dialogue, but now it's all pre-recorded. I don't answer my phone until after the beep tells my who it is. Robo-calls usually hang up.

Last week 53 robo calls and one reminder for an appointment.

Thursday: 15 hang-ups (you know, where the computer dials and if the phone is answered, you get a call a few minutes later); 10 political calls including 5 for "surveys"; 2 calls from friends. And the monthly call for a multisyllabic/vaguely Spanish name (whoever that is still doesn't speak any English but now says "Oh-oh" when I answer).

Friday: *22* hang-ups; 13 survey or political push to vote; 5 house-siding companies (always funny because the house is brick); 2 selling windows; 4 wanting to clean furnace ducts; 1 chemical lawn-care service; 3 wrong numbers from adolescents ~ hmmm, somebody popular probably has a similar number.

And someone wanted to know why I leave the answering machine on! And, yes, I'm on the do-not-call lists.

Don, don't mean to hijack your quotes; they're right on, as usual. But I actually feel a little better after reading Meldy's post. Her experiences have been worse than mine, I think. I'm totally disgusted with the computer generated calls, the political calls, and esp. the credit card call which tells me this is the last chance I'll have to reduce my interest rate. If I want to speak to a "live" representative, press 1. Three times I've done that so I could explain we don't carry a balance. Guess what? Each time that person hangs up on me!! I get so mad I could spit! We don't have Caller ID, so should probably let all calls go to the answering machine. We're on the do-not-call lists, too.

One more thing, not about telephones: the last four days when I've come to the GP, Norton pops up with a little box telling me they've "thwarted" a "Fake App Attack" on my computer. What's that about, I wonder? It's only happened when I've been on the GP. It's disconcerting, b/c this is truly my favorite place to visit on the 'net.

mwheel, I've also been getting the little box with "Fake App Attack" from Norton. I cant't tell if it has anything to do with GW. I get a 60 day free subscription to Norton thru my cable company, so they have an "in" to my laptop.
After the thirty days it goes to a paid subscription.

GW and GP are full of adds that leave cookies on your machine, some even with an add blocker. Depending on the browser you use an which version these thins will drop messes that different antivirus programs handle in their own way. I use windows xp, firefox with add block plus subscribed to a list that is updated and AVG free version. AVG has a feature called do not track that says it is blocking 9 trackers on this page. I get no adds of any kind or warnings unless I click something I should not. Your mileage will vary with other combinations and setups. AVG free version is the highest rated free version and passes many of the pay ones.

West gardener and Don, thank you both for the added information. I esp. like the feature about "do not track" on AVG, but still have nine months to go on my Norton subscription.

Thanks for the info, Don. I'll look into AVG.