Q: AOL is using the space at the bottom of my free e-mail to show advertisements. The problem is that the graphic ads take several minutes to load, run and disappear. I don’t want to change my e-mail address. How can I avoid having AOL e-mail show advertising?
— Gerald Rogers, Minneapolis
A: You can’t completely stop AOL from showing you ads; that’s the company’s strategy for making money on a free e-mail service. You can only opt out of AOL’s “behavioral ads,” which are based on your Web browsing, by going to . So you either have to put up with the AOL ads or find a new free e-mail account with a different e-mail address. One way to deal with this transition is to maintain two e-mail addresses, and have the new account import your contacts and received e-mail from the old account. You can then gradually switch your friends over to your new e-mail address by sending all new messages from the new account.
