email time bombs

Does anyone know about email time bombs. A sender’s emails were sent to me over a period of time and were “taken out” of my inbox. I was told that they were email time bombs. I know they are illegal, but has my computer or email account been compromised on some way. I have the ip address of the computer that sent it too me. Yahoo and Hotmail were of no help, spent $100 on Norton help and $50 on tech help.