Inside Iowa State
July 17, 1998
Campus responds to proliferation of spam
by Diana Pounds
Last spring, campus staff received complaints that e-mail promoting an adult Web site was coming from Iowa State. An investigation revealed the mail hadn't really originated here, although to the 3,000 recipients, it certainly looked like an Iowa State piece. The mail had been diverted through an ISU college computer and carried a bogus "iastate.edu" return address.
Such stories have become common, as junk e-mail, known as spam, has invaded cyberspace. Perhaps most frustrating for those who find their e-mail boxes clogged with pitches for pyramid schemes, merchandise and Web sites is the difficulty of fighting back.
Spammers are as adept at concealing their e-mail addresses as they are at finding yours. Typically, the return address on spam goes no where, or worse, to an innocent party, whose address has been "borrowed" by the spammer.
While lawmakers develop legislation aimed at curbing spam around the country, Internet experts at Iowa State and elsewhere are looking for technical solutions. Staff were not able to track down the spammer who hit the college server in the spring, but the problem that allowed the spammer to "hijack" the server has been corrected.
Campus computer experts also have taken steps to keep faculty, staff and student addresses off spam mail lists. Spammers typically use special software that mines Web sites for e-mail addresses. ISU mail and Web servers have been configured to make such mining difficult, if not impossible, said Sly Upah, Computation Center system analyst and "postmaster" for ISU Internet mail activities.
A more drastic anti-spam measure that has been employed at Iowa State and elsewhere is to simply turn away all mail coming into the university from an Internet domain.
"We have blocked a few sites that are known to be strictly used for spamming," said Mike Bowman, assistant director of the Computation Center, "but we have to be very careful. When you block a site, you block all the legitimate mail too."
Bowman added that the ISU Code of Computer Ethics prohibits use of university computing facilities for spamming. Those who violate this policy could be charged through the university judicial system.
How to jam a spammer
ISU Computation Center staff and other Internet experts offer the following suggestions for reducing spam in your e-mail box:
Iowa State homepage
- Protect your e-mail address. UseNet news groups are prime hunting grounds for spam mail list collectors. Often, they use software that collects addresses from headers. You can foil such programs by leaving the "From" line blank or using a fake address (for example, chris@nospam.edu) and putting your real address at the bottom of the posting. While this will keep your address off some lists, it's not foolproof, since some spammers also collect addresses from the body of news group postings.
- Think before responding. If a spammer offers you an opportunity to request that your name be taken off a mail list, consider before responding. Responsible spammers will honor your request. The other kind will use your response to validate your address and have no intention of removing you from the list. Don't provide additional information.
- Delete it.In most cases, you will save time by just trashing the unsolicited e-mail. Offensive mail should be reported to the apparent originating site by sending e- mail to abuse@offending.site. Spam that appears to have originated at ISU should be reported to abuse@iastate.edu.
- Filter it out. Some e-mail programs, like Eudora, Netscape Messenger and Microsoft Outlook Express, allow you to filter mail. The programs look for key words in the sender information, then automatically discard, move or label the mail, according to your wishes.
- Become an anti-spam activist. Numerous Web sites are devoted to the the battle against spammers. If you have the energy and the inclination to take more active steps against spam, you can learn more at such sites as:
- http://www.cnet.com/content/Features/Howto/Spam/
- http://www.mcs.net/~sorkin/email.html
- http://spam.abuse.net
Inside Iowa State, inside@iastate.edu, University Relations
Copyright © 1998, Iowa State University, all rights reserved
URL: http://www.inside.iastate.edu/1998/0717/spam.html
Revised 7/16/98