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  • Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Time: 9:44 am Category: Email, Groupwise, MIX, News, Scams, The Internet Tagged spam, the daily athenaeum, wvu Discussion: 2 Comments

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Our student newspaper posted a story on Monday about spam and how OIT deals with it.  The article details some impressive stats.  Spam is a touchy subject.  No one likes to get it and if even a little bit gets through, it seems like we have a problem.  The fact that WVU receives 10 MILLION+ emails a day and 95% of that is spam never ceases to amaze me.  I think it is also important to remember, as the article pointed out, that we do not filter email based on content.  We feel that would be inappropriate for an academic institution to do so.

One of the students quoted indicated they wished there was a way to mark an email as spam.  I have to admit, I’d like that too.   Unfortunately, that would be part of the application that you use to check email (MIX or GroupWise) and not under OIT control.

Here is the article from the DA.

A look into the system of spam
By Danielle Clements

Every day, the Office of Information Technology receives about 10 million incoming e-mails from outside of the University. And of those 10 million e-mails, 95 percent are spam.

To block spam and other security issues, OIT utilizes specialized software specifically made for businesses, universities and other organizations.

As e-mails queue up in the system, the software check scans for e-mail and IP addresses which are “blacklisted.”

Read the rest of the story online at the The Daily Athenaeum.

If you’d like to take some measures toward cutting down on the amount of spam you receive, take a look at our online resources on this and other topics.