Q: I have heard that it is possible to be notified when an email recipient receives an email. Can you tell me how this is done?

A: You need to have Outlook 2000 (or Outlook Express 5.01) to use this feature. All you need to do is write your email as normal but before sending it select Options from the View menu, then check the Request a Read Receipt for this Message, if you are using Outlook 2000.

Or select Request Read Receipt from the Tools menu, if you are using Outlook Express. When the recipient downloads the email, a response is automatically generated to let you know it has been received.

Q: I want to manage my bank account online but I am worried about my account being "tampered" with. Are these facilities truly secure?

A: In the context of the internet, there really is no such thing as "truly secure" but many of the banking institutions come pretty close and have invested very large sums of money to make transactions as secure as possible.

The most likely cause of any problems with your account being misused is likely to be through poorly stored passwords and log-in IDs. Try to keep these away from the machine you use to access your account. Also make sure you do not have the Remember Passwords option set on your browser.

It is also important to ensure that you end the session and close the browser afterwards if you are intending to leave your machine where someone else might use it after you have accessed your account.

Q: I appear to have hundreds of files that end with the extension .tmp on my machine. What are they and what do they do? Can I delete them?

A: The extension .tmp stands for temporary file. These files are often generated by programmes to store transient information. Programmes are supposed to remove these when you close the application down but sometimes this does not happen for a variety of reasons (the application may be shut down using Task Manager or the computer is turned off without shutting down or the software simply does not bother to remove the files).

You can safely try to delete them since, if a file is in use, it cannot be deleted.