Several users of Tufts Webmail accounts have reported receiving large volumes of unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, or spam, and the University has begun to take steps to alleviate the problem.
Two types of spam have recently increased in volume. One type includes links to cheap software, while the other contains unknown attachments or downloadable documents. Both types change the last name of the recipient and have a subject line resembling something like "re[12]."
"I get a lot of that, and it's really, really annoying," freshman Shazia Jamal said.
According to Saul Tannenbaum, associate director of the University Systems division of Tufts University Computing and Communications Services (TCCS), Tufts does not have a formal policy on spam.
"Our experience has been that there's very little spam that's received only by Tufts, if there's any at all. So reporting spam hasn't been a high priority," Tannenbaum said.
He also said that spam "degrades everybody's ability to use e-mail for the purposes for which it's intended. [It] is something that we have to continuously work at controlling."
All e-mail that comes into Tufts Webmail accounts are scanned for viruses and spam. TCCS attempts to delete viruses before they reach students' inboxes, and uses a free downloadable program called SpamAssassin to tag possible spam. Tagged headers then alert spam filtering devices of suspected junk mail.
Many e-mail programs have filtering devices that users can set up and modify to fit individual preferences. One such program is Mozilla, which offers built-in filtering capabilities to control spam. Mozilla users can also mark spam e-mails as "junk," training the program to identify future unwanted mail.
Webmail is an e-mail account that students can access on the Internet from any computer. Other universities, such as Boston University and Stanford University, offer Webmail to students.
Webmail currently does not offer filtering software, but Tannenbaum said that TCCS is in the process of developing filtering capabilities that will be available in the fall, along with a new version of Webmail.
In addition to its own Webmail account, Stanford offers a Spam Deletion Tool to detect and delete spam before it enters students' inboxes. Some Tufts students, like freshman Adam Silverberg, said they would embrace such a policy.
"That would be the best, because no one actually reads [spam]," he said. "It should be [TCCS's] job to regulate junk mail."
Tannenbaum, however, said he disagrees with Silverberg's statement because he does not feel that it is TCCS's job to determine what mail should be delivered.
"We've believed ... that spam protection has to be 'opt in' - that TCCS should not make decisions about what mail should or should not be delivered. That's why we 'tag' the mail in the headers and let e-mail users decide on their own how to filter mail," he said.
SpamAssassin, the software Tufts uses to tag mail, runs a number of tests on mail to determine the probability the mail is junk. According to Tannenbaum, there are several different ways SpamAssassin can be used, depending upon the way e-mail systems are
architected.
Reliable and consistent statistics on spam-detecting software are difficult to find, Tannenbaum said, as spammers are constantly changing their methods and Internet overseers must continually adapt to improve the system.
"Because spammers get more and more creative in the ways they send and disguise spam, we need to continuously improve the tools we have to deal with it," he said.
