Advertisers selling body-part enhancers and other prescription medications are clogging up some MSU Webmail inboxes, but university officials say there are ways to reduce the number of junk e-mails.
MSU Webmail has a spam filter called SpamAssassin that helps cut back on the amount of spam actually making it into students' inboxes, said David Gift, vice provost for libraries computing & technology.
In order to enable spam filters, users have to log into their account and click on the "preferences" link, Gift said.
Webmail users have four options in blocking spam. They can have it disabled — which is the default setting — have "spam" inserted in the beginning of the subject line, have all spam messages moved to a folder labeled "spam" or have the messages deleted automatically.
"We block somewhere between half a million and a million messages a day," said Richard Wiggins, senior information technologist for the Academic Computing & Network Services, or ACNS. "It varies from time to time, but it was pretty steady at a half-million a day, but there has been times in the past year it was over a million."
According to the university's Web site, the Webmail spam filter identified about 700,000 junk messages per day in August. During the last year, the most messages the spam filter identified was more than 1.3 million on one day in January.
"It will vary in waves that are largely outside of our control," Gift said. "It depends on the new technology that spammers are using."
University officials selected a lower SpamAssassin level to block spam so the filter doesn't delete e-mail that people want, he said.
"People who send spam are not necessarily doing anything to try and harm you," Wiggins said.
Sandy Brasington, team leader for the ACNS Help Desk, said officials recommend that Webmail users set up spam filters and antivirus protection.
"We receive e-mails, calls and walk-ins about what they can do about spam," Brasington said.
Programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Eudora can be used to help cut down on spam. Mail is sent through another spam filter before reaching the students' inboxes. Wiggins said students should also be careful about who they give their e-mail address to because a lot of times that will cause people to receive more spam.
Another way to cut down on spam is to have more than one e-mail account, like Yahoo or Google, he said. This way, people can guard their primary address and only use it for business.
Spam, viruses and spyware are not the only things Webmail users should worry about in their inboxes, Wiggins said. Phishing e-mails masquerade as messages from other places like credit unions. They ask for people to type in their personal information, and it is used to steal a person's identity and steal from them.
"Don't ever volunteer any personal information over e-mail," Wiggins said.
Gift said he has seen an increase of spam messages in his inbox recently and uses the spam filters. He said he looks at his messages and if it looks like it may be spam he deletes it right away.
Kinesiology freshman Matt Harris said he uses his Webmail account for everything but does not receive any spam messages.
"My roommate complains about it. He gets about 75 spam messages a day," Harris said. "I guess I got lucky."
Brasington said if you have an e-mail address for a longer period of time, you might receive more spam messages.
For more information, visit help.msu.edu.
