There have been some changes to online email providers Yahoo Mail and Hotmail (and a host of smaller operations that are not necessary to mention). As you might know, the passwording, and changes to registrations for both systems are handled by Yahoo (even Microsoft's Hotmail). Spamming originating from them, or appearing to originate from them, and other breaches of security over the past few years have led a number of ISPs to block mail originating from Yahoo Mail and Hotmail.

In an attempt to reverse this trend, and try to restore credibility to online email providers, these systems instituted sweeping security changes in March. Among those were the blocking attachments on incoming emails. Note: we are not talking about email that can ge read by Outlook, Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator. So, why am I telling you this?

None of these systems has made any attempt to install the correct filters to read mail originating from many email systems, especially those that are highly secure. That means that mail from those systems to a Yahoo Mail or Hotmail account is seen as some kind of attachment, primarily rtfs. Those servers suppress the attachment, meaning the person reading the email sees only a blank email. There is a way around this.

If the problems occurs, copy your message and paste it into a text document, such as one created by Notepad or Simpletext, or paste it into a MSWord document and do a "Save As" and save it as a text file. Call it something like message.txt or reply.txt. Attach that to your email and send it to the Yahoo Mail or Hotmail recipient. Those servers WILL read a text file, and you should be able to communicate successfully.